Abstract:
Community-acquired pneumonia remains an important cause of disease and death both in
the developed and the developing worlds and therefore continues to have major medical
impact. The mortality remains high despite the ready availability of potent antimicrobial agents to which the organisms are susceptible. However, management of these infections
is potentially complicated by the emerging resistance of many of the common pathogens
to the different classes of antibiotics that are usually prescribed. Furthermore, it is also
being recognized that antibiotic resistance and/or treatment failures may occur not only
through traditional microbial antibiotic resistance mechanisms, but also through less
well-defined mechanisms, particularly those developed by the microbes in relation to
their quorum sensing/biofilm machinery. Much recent research in this field has been
focused on evaluating the clinical impact of antibiotic resistance on optimal antibiotic
treatment and antimicrobial choices, as well as alternative strategies to deal with
antibiotic resistance and/or treatment failures.
