Pneumonia Infection(निमोनिया): Antibiotics, Treatment, & Recovery time

In this video SimpliHealth expert Pulmonologist, Dr. Preeti Sharma is talking about Pneumonia Infection(निमोनिया) & its Antibiotics, Treatment, & Recovery time. Also she is answering some important questions that often stay in people’s minds like:

• How much time does it take to heal the lungs after a pneumonia infection? 
• In how much time does it get cleared? 
• What if, after antibiotics, it doesn’t get healed? 

Pneumonia occurs in four stages in the initial stage: congestion followed by red hepatization, grey hepatization, and last is resolution. So these stages take a total of 8-10 days in which the lung starts healing. As in pneumonia, air sacs are filled with fluid, so with the treatment, as the medicines go inside, the air sacks return to their original state after 8-10 days. So that the patients can breathe back to normal, they can breathe easily. 

How will it get clear?  

The patient’s symptoms improve with the antibiotics like they had a fever or coughing; it gets better with antibiotics. Still, if the radiological resolution is like X-Ray, we see a patch or consolidation that will take time to go. This patch or consolidation can still be seen after two weeks. So it takes four to six weeks to completely clear. One shouldn’t worry that much if their symptoms are recovered.

What if, even after antibiotics, pneumonia is not getting healed? 

There is a specific period. For example, the doctor keeps the patient on follow-up for one to two months if there is no improvement or some symptoms are left. They are facing some significant problems on follow-up if there is no resolution in the span of two to three months that we observe in Radiology in x-ray or CT-Scan. Then we call it non-resolving pneumonia. If it is non-resolving pneumonia, the doctor needs to examine whether the patient has not responded to the antibiotics or some underlying lesions that we couldn’t identify. 

For example, there may be a chance of malignancy, tuberculosis, or other reasons that may be associated with it. So it is called non-resolving pneumonia and for this. We need to examine this further by laparoscopy or by another means.  So if the patient has pneumonia, please consider that it will take some time to heal. And the patient’s radiological resolution will also take some time. If they are not cured, we have other measures and will perform other examinations to rule out other options that there might be some other underlying problem with pneumonia.

Thank you