clinical features
Last reviewed 01/2018
Clinical features of staphylococcal pneumonia may include:
- cough - often productive but less so in young children
- fever and chills
- pleural pain
- progressive dyspnoea
- cyanosis
- rigors
- sputum may be bloody or frankly purulent
- history of abrupt onset
- chest expansion reduced
- chest dull to percussion
- bronchial breathing
- crepitations
Primary infection usually occurs in infants and children with the abrupt onset of respiratory distress or a pneumothorax; secondary infection is a more likely aetiology in older children and adults.
Pulmonary symptoms are less apparent and onset more insidious when pneumonia develops following cystic fibrosis, nosocomial infection, bronchogenic carcinoma, and staphylococcal bacteraemia.