The inflammation of the lungs caused by the bacterial infection may not be a serious matter but it can become a life-threatening one if the infected person has a weakened immune system.



Pneumonia can be cured with antibiotics nowadays, but in the early 1900's, before the antibiotics were discovered; it was a serious condition that used to kill many people.

By the infections' location, pneumonia can be divided in two main types: lobar pneumonia, when the infection affects only one lung and bronchial pneumonia, the condition that affects both lungs. Thanks to the discovery of the antibiotics, what used to be a deadly condition in the past, has now turned into an easy to treat disease. The treatment and the cure may take, depending on every patient, between one and two weeks.

Coughing and fever are the first symptoms ever to appear in case of pneumonia. As times passes by, the fever worsens and a green liquid will appear in the cough. In the more advanced stages of the disease, the infected persons will experience pain in the chest, loosing appetite, vomiting, coughing blood and bluish skin. The symptoms vary and will not be encountered by all patients. They depend on the physical state of every person and the nature of the infection.

A doctor should be consulted immediately if a person experiences any of the symptoms mentioned above. The doctor will order some blood tests and an X-ray test and if the diagnosis will be set on pneumonia, the treatment using antibiotics will start right away.

In normal cases, the treatment will be done at home, but in more advanced cases, those who were discovered later, hospitalization may be required for a few days. Before the administration of the antibiotics, the doctor will perform some tests to establish whether the patient is allergic to any types of antibiotics and the result of those tests will be taken into consideration when prescribing a treatment.

Prevention of this disease is hard to be done because this disease can be contacted everywhere.