Clinical Indicators of Radiographic Findings in Patients With Suspected Community-Acquired Pneumonia

This is a study involving the emergency department and outpatient clinics of the David Grant United States Air Force (USAF) Medical Center, a tertiary care facility. Patients 18 years of age or older with acute respiratory symptoms and positive or equivocal chest radiographs from October 1, 2004 through May 31, 2005 will be included as positive cases. Controls will be randomly selected from a review of negative chest radiograph reports with a clinical history of an acute respiratory illness over the same time period. Once patients are appropriately identified as control or cases, outpatient charts will be reviewed to gather data on six clinical indicators. Sensitivities and specificities will be calculated for each clinical indicator, to determine which patients require chest radiographs in the setting of suspected community acquired pneumonia (CAP)