I - INTRODUCTION

This case is about a 5 month old baby boy who lives in Brgy. 3, Lipa City

admitted at Lipa Medix Medical Center with a final diagnosis of Pneumonia. Pneumonia

is an inflammation of the lungs caused by an infection. Pneumonia can be a serious

threat to one’s health. Although pneumonia is a special concern for older adults and

those with chronic illnesses, it can also strike young, healthy people as well.

Most pneumonia is caused by bacterial infections. The most common is the

bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae. Bacterial pneumonia can attack anyone.

Pneumococcal pneumonia occurs only in the lobar form. An increasing number of

viruses are being identified as the cause of respiratory infection. Half of all pneumonias

are believed to be of viral origin. Most viral pneumonias are patchy and the body

usually fights them off without help from medications or other treatments.

Pneumococcal can affect more than the lungs. The bacteria can also cause serious

infections of the covering of the brain (meningitis), the bloodstream, and other parts of

the body.

Symptoms of pneumonia vary, depending on the age of the child and the cause

of the pneumonia. Common symptoms are fever, cough, unusually rapid breathing,

breathing with grunting or wheezing sounds, labored breathing that makes a child's rib

muscles retract (when muscles under the rib cage or between ribs draw inward with

each breath), chest pain, abdominal pain, loss of appetite (in older kids) or poor feeding

(in infants), in extreme cases, bluish or gray color of the lips and fingernails.

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 Sometimes, a child's only symptom is rapid breathing. Sometimes when the

pneumonia is in the lower part of the lungs near the abdomen, there may be no

breathing problems, but there may be fever and abdominal pain or vomiting.

When pneumonia is caused by bacteria, an infected child usually becomes sick

relatively quickly and experiences the sudden onset of high fever and unusually rapid

breathing. When pneumonia is caused by viruses, symptoms tend to appear more

gradually and are often less severe than in bacterial pneumonia. Wheezing may be

more common in viral pneumonia.

A case with a diagnosis of Pneumonia may catch one’s attention, though the

disease is just like an ordinary cough and fever, it can lead to death especially when no

intervention or care is done. Since the case is a toddler, an appropriate care has to be

done to make the patient’s recovery faster. Treating patients with pneumonia is

necessary to prevent its spread to others and make them as another victim of this

illness.

According to the WHO’s Global Burden of Disease 2000 Project, lower

respiratory infections were the second leading cause of death in children younger than 5

years (about 2.1 million [19.6%]).The WHO Child Health Epidemiology Reference

Group estimated the median global incidence of clinical pneumonia to be 0.28 episodes

per child-year. This equates to an annual incidence of 150.7 million new cases, of which

11-20 million (7-13%) are severe enough to require hospital admission. Ninety-five

percent of all episodes of clinical pneumonia in young children worldwide occur in

developing countries.

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 According to the Department of Health of the Republic of the Philippines,

pneumonia ranked 3rd from the Top 10 Leading causes of Infant Mortality Rate with a

mortality of 2,013 newborns and a percentage of 9.3 as of June 30, 2009. In line with

this, bacterial sepsis of the newborn ranked 1 st with a mortality of 3,161 and a

percentage of 14.6 and respiratory distress of the newborn ranked 2 nd with a mortality of

2,298 and a percentage of 10.6.