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Strategies for recognizing pneumonia look-alikes

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Abstract

Community-acquired pneumonia is a common diagnosis in children. Among the many children whose symptoms and/or chest X-ray is consistent with community-acquired pneumonia, it can be difficult to distinguish the rare cases of differential diagnoses that require specific management. The aim of this educational article is to provide clinicians with a series of questions to ask themselves in order to detect a possible differential diagnosis of pneumonia in children. The value of this approach is illustrated by 13 real clinical cases in which a child was misdiagnosed as having lobar pneumonia.

What is Known:

• When a lobar pneumonia is diagnosed, an appropriate antibiotic treatment leads to the resolution of the clinical signs in most cases.

• However, several diseases can be look-alikes for pneumonia and mislead the practitioner.

What is New:

• This article provides a new approach to identify differential diagnoses of pneumonia in children.

• It is illustrated by 13 real-life situations of children misdiagnosed as having pneumonia.

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Abbreviations

CAP:

Community-acquired pneumonia

CT:

Computed tomography

CXR:

Chest X-ray

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pediatric Pulmonology and Allergology, University Hospital Necker-Enfants Malades, AP-HP, 149 rue de Sèvres, 75015, Paris, France

    David Drummond, Alice Hadchouel & Christophe Delacourt

  2. Université de Paris, Paris, France

    David Drummond, Alice Hadchouel & Christophe Delacourt

  3. Department of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology, University Hospital Trousseau, AP-HP, Paris, France

    Arnaud Petit

  4. Paris-Sorbonne University, Paris, France

    Arnaud Petit

  5. Department of Pediatric Surgery, University Hospital Necker-Enfants Malades, AP-HP, Paris, France

    Naziha Khen-Dunlop

  6. Department of Pediatric Radiology, University Hospital Necker-Enfants Malades, AP-HP, Paris, France

    Cécile Lozach & Laureline Berteloot

Authors
  1. David Drummond
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  2. Alice Hadchouel
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  3. Arnaud Petit
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  4. Naziha Khen-Dunlop
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  5. Cécile Lozach
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  6. Christophe Delacourt
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  7. Laureline Berteloot
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by all authors. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Drummond, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to David Drummond.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Communicated by Peter de Winter

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Cite this article

Drummond, D., Hadchouel, A., Petit, A. et al. Strategies for recognizing pneumonia look-alikes. Eur J Pediatr 181, 3565–3575 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00431-022-04575-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00431-022-04575-9

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