49 59 As a consequence we were able to extract data only from studies where authors considered pneumonia to be an important outcome, because of either scientific interest or statistical significance.
Additionally, most of the studies considered pneumonia of any aetiology, but six were performed in patients with pneumonia due to L. pneumophila (n = 3) [ 27– 29], Haemophilus influenzae (n = 1) [ 30], Gram-negative bacteria (n = 1) [ 31], or Enterobacteriaceae or P. aeruginosa (n = 1) [ 32].
A basic sensitivity analysis suggests that the Research Councils introduction of full economic costing in 2004 has not greatly skewed the size of awards and the volatility in total and temporal trends remain when considering pneumonia funding with and without BBSRC and MRC data, though there may be implications for other areas of infectious disease research.
Most pneumonias were considered 'aspiration pneumonia acquired in a nursing home' because of the patients' ADL status.
We considered sinusitis, pneumonia, streptococcal pharyngitis, otitis media, bacterial infection, and pertussis "antibiotic-appropriate diagnoses".
Strength of our multi-centered study is that we considered pure pneumonia cases confirmed by radiologists following strict selection criteria where all exposure information was obtained prospectively.
We considered nosocomial pneumonia more likely to be reported as a secondary discharge diagnosis; therefore, only the primary diagnosis of the first record of each episode of disease was used in all data analyses.
We also recorded the occurrence of new infections, considering only pneumonia, catheter-related bloodstream infections and urinary tract infections, the presence of bacteremia, new episodes of severe sepsis or of septic shock, and the occurrence of new organ dysfunctions, according to the definitions available in Additional file 1.
For example, pneumonia terms included those considered equivalent to pneumonia or likely to represent pneumonia (pneumonia-equivalent, e.g., bronchopneumonia or consolidation) as well as those used to convey a pneumonia diagnosis in the correct context (pneumonia-related, e.g., infiltrate or opacity).
Pneumonia was considered healthcare-associated pneumonia in near half patients (86, 49 %).
