Introduction:

community-acquired pneumonia is an acute infection of lung parenchyma, being nowadays an important cause of morbidity and mortality in Colombia. In this entity, poor health care quality and poor adherence to management guidelines has been associated with a negative impact on both, the clinical outcome of the patient and the academic and financial solvency of a university hospital.

Objective:

to describe the quality of medical care and adherence to the Colombian community-acquired pneumonia guideline in the Hospital Universitario de Santander during the 2014-2015 period.

Methods:

descriptive cross-sectional study. 121 clinical records with diagnosis of community-acquired pneumonia in the Hospital Universitario de Santander were selected. Variables regarding diagnostic approach, treatment assignment and general recommendations were collected from these, evaluating for each item the proportion of adherence to the guideline as well as the quality criteria in medical care defined by the Community Acquired Pneumonia Organization.

Results:

items with best reported adherence were: complete blood count (100%) and chest X-ray (98%). On the other hand, CURB-65 classification (15%), chest X-ray indicated for the ambulatory control (12%), as well as recommendations for cessation of smoking and vaccination (0%), were the parameters with the lowest performance.

Conclusions:

there was evidence of failure in the clinical classification of the patient, which was associated with poor use of microbiological diagnostic laboratories and overuse of imaging studies such as computed tomography, thus favoring inefficient treatment and development of bacterial pharmacological resistance. MÉD.UIS.2019;32(2):23-30

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