Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 23, 1990 TAG: 9005230158
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
Generally, pneumonia is well understood by doctors and is easily treated with a variety of antibiotics, said Dr. Bisher Akil, an expert in infectious diseases and pulmonary medicine at the University of Southern California.
"You get simple outpatient treatment with antibiotics and you get over it," Akil said. "In healthy people, it's not a problem unless you ignore it and let it escalate."
But pneumonia is fatal for an estimated 70,000 Americans each year, ranking as the sixth-leading cause of death, according to the American Lung Association.
Most of the deaths occur among the elderly, infants and people with illnesses such as cancer or diabetes - all of whom have weak immune systems and may be unable to fight off infection.
In other cases, death can occur if treatment begins too late, as was apparently the case with Henson, or because the particular strain of pneumonia is difficult to identify.
Pneumonia is an infection of lung tissue and is classified according to its cause and its location in the lung, Akil said. The disease is most commonly caused by bacteria. It is also caused by viral infections, such as influenza. In rarer instances, pneumonia is caused by fungi, parasites, chemical agents or allergic reactions to foreign particles that lodge in the lung.
Symptoms can vary according to its type. Four major symptoms common to streptococcus are fever, chest pain, cough and shortness of breath, Akil said. Bacterial pneumonia is usually accompanied by a discharge of sputum, sometimes blood-tinged, from the lungs; viral pneumonia often produces a dry cough.
by CNB