Respiratory Infections PDF

Preface

Respiratory tract infections continue to be major cause of morbidity and mortality on a global basis, despite tremendous advances in medicine. Affected patients are usually first seen by primary care practitioners; however, infectious disease and pulmonary specialists are also often consulted. A thorough knowledge of respiratory infections is therefore essential for the broad spectrum of health care practitioners. Such knowledge should include information on not only microbial pathogens and antimicrobials but also on clinical presentation, pathophysiology, treatment guidelines, and the approach to complicated clinical situations. It is quite amazing that in spite of the importance and complexity of respiratory infections, few sources are currently available for comprehensive, up-to-date information on their management.

Respiratory tract infections are an overlap area of medicine, falling in the preview of both infectious disease and pulmonary medicine. This likely underlies the current fragmentation of published information regarding respiratory tract infections. Infectious disease textbooks and monographs tend to focus narrowly on the pathogens and antibiotic management, while pulmonary textbooks and monographs tend to concentrate on nonantimicrobial treatment and compromised lung function. These textbooks and monographs also fail to provide the relevant knowledge base for a practicing physician to distinguish between the various respiratory tract infection syndromes. The clinical presentation of the various respiratory tract infections overlap, and a practicing physician often expends (or should expend) considerable time and effort to distinguish between the various syndromes to make an accurate diagnosis. Only then can appropriate management be provided.

This book is an attempt to build bridges between these different perspectives on respiratory tract infections to provide comprehensive but clinically relevant knowledge to health care practitioners from different backgrounds. A syndrome-based approach is adopted wherever possible in this book to assist the practicing physician to readily distinguish clearly between the various syndromes. For each clinical syndrome, the specific chapters provide, in a consistent format, discussions about the definition, clinical presentation, etiopathogenesis and the diagnostic, treatment, and prevention approaches. Complications and difficult management scenarios are all too common in respiratory tract infections. For each syndrome, a discussion of such case scenarios is presented. For example, for acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, management of patients who experience recurrent exacerbations is discussed.

The initial chapters of this book address some important general issues, including normal lung defense mechanisms for respiratory pathogens, microbial pathogenetic mechanisms, and special considerations for antimicrobial use in respiratory infections. Subsequent chapters address the respiratory infection syndromes in a uniform manner to provide a comparative contextual framework for the reader. The last few chapters address the future, with a look at emerging infections, diagnostic modalities, and therapies.

It is my belief that this book will be useful not only for pulmonologists but also for infectious disease, critical care physicians, trainees, and allied health care practitioners. Though clinically oriented, it should provide researchers in the field to use this book as a state-of-the art summary of data relevant to their research.