• Sunghoon Park, Kil Chan Oh, Ki-Seong Kim, Kyu-Tae Song, Kwang Ha Yoo, Yun Su Shim, Young Ju Lee, Myung Goo Lee, Jang Uk Yun, Hyun Su Kim, Yee Hyung Kim, Won Jun Lee, Do Il Kim, Hyung Gun Cha, Jae-Myung Lee, Jung San Seo, and Ki-Suck Jung.
• Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine, Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital, Anyang, Korea.
• J. Korean Med. Sci. 2015 Oct 1; 30 (10): 1446-52.

AbstractThe role of atypical bacteria and the effect of antibiotic treatments in acute bronchitis are still not clear. This study was conducted at 22 hospitals (17 primary care clinics and 5 university hospitals) in Korea. Outpatients (aged ≥ 18 yr) who had an acute illness with a new cough and sputum (≤ 30 days) were enrolled in 2013. Multiplex real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was used to detect five atypical bacteria. A total of 435 patients were diagnosed as having acute bronchitis (vs. probable pneumonia, n = 75), and 1.8% (n = 8) were positive for atypical pathogens (Bordetella pertussis, n = 3; B. parapertussis, n = 0; Mycoplasma pneumoniae, n = 1; Chlamydophila pneumoniae, n = 3; Legionella pneumophila, n = 1). Among clinical symptoms and signs, only post-tussive vomiting was more frequent in patients with atypical pathogens than those without (P = 0.024). In all, 72.2% of the enrolled patients received antibiotic treatment at their first visits, and β-lactams (29.4%) and quinolones (20.5%) were the most commonly prescribed agents. In conclusion, our study demonstrates that the incidence of atypical pathogens is low in patients with acute bronchitis, and the rate of antibiotic prescriptions is high.

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