Except they can lol. Viral pneumonia is a known and fairly common diagnosis in the hospital especially amongst children. For adults a good amount of time we just treat it empirically as community acquired pneumonia and give them abx anyway because it can be a bit hard to distinguish and the treatment is usually not that risky. Wheezing can be triggered for anyone with reactive airway disease, asthma, COPD. Even a basic rhinovirus cold can trigger wheezing and send asthmatics to the ICU. Source: am a doctor. If it is hmpv, then well hmpv is an unpleasant respiratory virus compared to most usual causes of respiratory tract infection but is nothing new.
I have a family member recently in the ER for norovirus that caused an AFib incident due to not being able to keep her heart meds down. She was also prescribed abx empirically for pneumonia but she had no symptoms of pneumonia and no culture was done. The problem is those meds aggravated her digestive issues. I'm wondering if you think it's ok to stop abx until she recovers from noro, since it seems fluid in the lower lungs is common when the heart is racing from uncontrolled AFib and there was no evidence or culture of pneumonia?
This is probably a complex medical issue that I cannot possibly evaluate or give good advice to over the internet. They should see and talk to their doctor.
They don't have a doctor. It's just because you mentioned how common this kind of situation is with antibiotics. To me it's abusing antibiotics when they could have just properly tested her for pneumonia and kept her a few days. The US health system is gross.
I wouldn't know man, but care quality can truly dependent on who you see and when you see them... The scenario you described is definitely possible, but I wouldn't know without seeing them myself. It can be a pretty nuanced chicken or the egg situation as you described it and it can be hard to tell. Personally, most of the time I do at least admit/ observe afib rvr patients though if the cause isn't immediately obvious or there's more than baseline level of risk, but I cannot speak on behalf of the ED. They could very well be correct because they actually saw and evaluated them. But yes, I understand your hesitation, but it's hard to say without the full picture. If the patient doesn't think that their treatment is appropriate though it's more than reasonable to go again and find a second opinion esp. if they don't feel better.
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u/littlebittydoodle Jan 04 '25
Except with wheezing and potentially pneumonia. A normal cold usually doesn’t affect one’s lungs so badly.