Study: Roughly 1 in 8 Patients Wrongly Diagnosed With Pneumonia

About 12% of patients were inappropriately diagnosed with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP), according to results from more than 17 000 hospitalized patients across 48 hospitals in Michigan. Older people as well as those with dementia or altered mental status were at particularly high risk of being inappropriately diagnosed, which the researchers defined as patients receiving antibiotics when they had fewer than 2 symptoms of pneumonia or negative chest x-ray results.