Pneumonia often causes more anxiety than necessary

When diagnosed with pneumonia, many people think something like "Oh God, grandad died of that!" But there is a huge difference between an elderly, frail person getting pneumonia and a child.

In the case of a child, it is not uncommon for pneumonia, e.g. if it is caused by a virus, not to require any specific treatment. Children are then often not dramatically ill.

Of course, there are also very, very severe cases in children. Even so severe that they have to be hospitalised. It is basically our task as paediatricians to discover when such an infection is more serious and needs to be treated with antibiotics.

What makes this task particularly difficult is that you can't say that pneumonia has exactly these and those symptoms. There is pneumonia without a cough. There is pneumonia without a fever. But there is definitely no such thing as severe pneumonia requiring treatment in a fit child.

This is therefore the important message: Is the child weak, sick, lethargic? Is it breathing too quickly or otherwise not breathing well? As a parent, you need to pay attention to this. Your child may have a fever for a few days, a cough for a week or ten days - none of this is a problem if they are otherwise fit. But if your child seems strange to you, seems very ill - especially in combination with a fever and cough, then you should definitely have your child checked out.

And what is then important: Your paediatrician should have a really good discussion with you about what's going on.

Finally, it is important to remember that a diagnosis of pneumonia, which is sometimes thrown at parents, is not necessarily bad per se. And if it does require treatment, then it must be treated with antibiotics in good time and in most cases it can be managed well.