Updating Community-Acquired Pneumonia Management

In 2025, published studies supported the hypothesis that broad-spectrum antibiotic therapy often isn’t necessary in moderately immunocompromised patients and identified which hospitalized patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP; see Figure 1) benefit most from adjunctive steroid therapy.

In a retrospective analysis of 2700 moderately immunocompromised adults hospitalized with CAP, researchers demonstrated that multidrug-resistant organisms were uncommon (3.5%) and that broad-spectrum antibiotics offered no survival benefit but were associated with more intensive care unit (ICU) transfers and readmissions and lengthened hospital stays. These findings support using standard CAP regimens (e.g., ceftriaxone with azithromycin or doxycycli…