Do children need blood tests for pneumonia?

Many pneumonia patients and their families are concerned about how to check for pneumonia. Pneumonia examination should be carried out as early as possible, which is very beneficial for patients. Knowing some methods of pneumonia examination in advance will help us to detect the occurrence of pneumonia as soon as possible in our lives and treat it. Here are some relatively accurate methods for pneumonia examination. Let me introduce some methods of pneumonia examination:

1. The disease occurs 48 hours after admission, with symptoms of cough, sputum, or changes in sputum characteristics.

2. Fever, lung rales, or new inflammatory lesions compared with X-rays at admission.

3. The same pathogen is isolated from the screened sputum (smear microscopy squamous epithelial cells <10/low-power field, white blood cells >25/low-power field, or the ratio of the two <1:2.5) twice in a row. If conditions permit, try to send the specimen to the laboratory for sputum washing and quantitative culture within 10 minutes, and the concentration of isolated pathogens should be ≥107FU/ml. 4. Blood culture is positive or the pathogen is isolated from the pleural effusion of pneumonia through puncture. This is also the diagnostic standard for pneumonia.

5. The diagnosis of pneumonia also requires analysis of contaminating bacteria.

6. Special pathogens are detected in respiratory secretions or confirmed by immunological methods in respiratory secretions, serum and other body fluids, or there is histopathological evidence.

7. Routine blood test is also one of the examination methods for pneumonia, which includes the total number of white blood cells and the percentage of various white blood cells in the total white blood cells. The total number of white blood cells in a normal person is 4~10×109/L, and the percentage of neutrophils is less than 70%. If the total number of white blood cells exceeds 10×109/L and the percentage of neutrophils exceeds 70%, we say that the patient's blood count is high, which is a common blood count change in bacterial pneumonia. This type of pneumonia examination is relatively common.

8. X-ray chest examination: By giving the patient an X-ray chest examination, we can directly understand the changes in the lungs. This is an important method for diagnosing pneumonia. Although pneumonia can be diagnosed through blood counts and X-ray chest films, the above two examinations cannot tell us what pathogen caused the pneumonia, whether it is caused by bacteria, viruses, mycoplasma, fungi, etc., and what type of bacteria it is. We can only reasonably take the patient's sputum and blood for culture to possibly find out the pathogen. 9. Humoral immunity test.

10. Liver function test and kidney function test.

11. Specific allergens can be detected by radioallergen adsorption test (RAST) to measure specific IgE. The serum IgE of patients with allergic asthma can be 2 to 6 times higher than that of normal people. This is also a pneumonia examination item.

12. Blood gas analysis: Severe asthma attacks may cause hypoxia, decreased PaO2 and SaO2, and excessive ventilation may cause decreased PaCO2 and increased pH, indicating respiratory alkalosis. This is also one of the examination methods for pneumonia.

13. The culture results obtained by any of the following methods can be considered as non-contaminated bacteria: pathogens isolated from lower respiratory tract secretions collected by fiberoptic bronchoscope or artificial airway suction with a concentration of ≥105CFU/ml; or pathogens isolated from lower respiratory tract secretions collected by fiberoptic bronchoscope or artificial airway suction through cricothyroid membrane puncture aspirate (TTA) or anti-contamination specimen brush (PSB) through fiberoptic bronchoscope or artificial airway suction. For patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the bacterial concentration must be ≥103CFU/ml.

The above are some common methods for pneumonia examination. Mistakes in pneumonia examination will bring many consequences. In addition to delaying the treatment of patients, it is also possible to choose the wrong treatment plan, thus endangering the patient's life safety, which needs to be taken seriously. So we all need to learn more about pneumonia. I hope these pneumonia examination methods of mine will be helpful to everyone.