[The characteristics of secondary pneumonia (the clinical, pathogenetic and bacteriological aspects)].

The analysis of 857 medical histories of patients presenting with different bodily afflictions and traumata that had come to be complicated by secondary pneumonia (SP) and of more than 2700 protocols of pathoanatomic studies made in those deceased in 35 percent of whom there had been identified morphologic changes in the lungs that presented a clinical picture of SP suggest to us that there are reasons to believe that in many instances, SP diagnosis is made difficult because of a grave condition of the patient, especially during the terminal period or the period of administering treatments when the underlying trouble symptomatology come forth rather than manifestations of pneumonia. The information secured in the pathoanatomical investigations permitted finding out that the clinical diagnosis of SP had come to be in agreement with the pathoanatomical one only in 70 percent of cases, with hypodiagnosis having come to 30%. Practitioners in their everyday work, should entertain a possibility of SP development in somatic troubles, extensive surgical interventions, traumata, wounds/injuries, burns, intoxications, and septic conditions, and they are supposed to actively prevent any possibility of origination and development of pulmonary complications.