Time to End Community Acquired as an Adjectival Diagnosis for Pneumonia

To the Editor The review of antibiotic therapy for children with nonsevere community-acquired pneumonia by Li et al found that shorter courses of antibiotics were not inferior to longer courses of antibiotics. But are even low doses of antibiotics routinely indicated for so-called community-acquired pneumonia? In fact, a study of children who met the World Health Organization’s criteria for community-acquired pneumonia demonstrated that the outcome of children receiving no antibiotics was not inferior to the outcome in children who received antibiotics. That result is consistent with the viral etiology of most children hospitalized for community-acquired pneumonia.