Objective: To assess physicians' awareness and use of guidelines for community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) published by Chinese Society of Respiratory Diseases (CSRD) and American Thoracic Society (ATS), and to investigate influences of the guidelines on the prognosis of patients with CAP.
Method: A total of 210 self-completion questionnaires about CAP guidelines were received from doctors of six hospitals in Beijing. In addition, 490 serial cases of CAP collected from these hospitals admitted from January 2002 to December 2003 were retrospectively analyzed.
Results: Most doctors had limited knowledge about atypical pathogens. For pulmonary physicians, only 46% (97/210) reported using the CSRD guideline. 82.4% of the doctors preferred to give initial empiric antibiotic therapy according to the patients' conditions. 79.5% (167/210) of the doctors ordered examination of the pathogens routinely and 84.3% (177/210) of them admitted its usefulness for choosing antibiotics. 84.5% (414/490) of the patients responded well to the initial empiric treatment. Patients who were treated according to the guidelines of CSRD and ATS were 229 cases and 131 cases respectively. There was no significant difference in the prognosis between patients who were treated according to the guideline and those who were not. There was no significant difference in the prognosis between cases with definite pathogens and cases without.
Conclusions: The results indicate low levels of awareness and use of guidelines for the management of CAP. Fewer than half of the patients were treated according to the guidelines. However, the treatments were effective in most of the patients, and there was no significant difference in the prognosis between patients who were treated according to the guideline and those who were not, because broad-spectrum antibiotics were overused. More effective guideline implementation strategies are needed to encourage compliance with practice guidelines for the management of CAP.