الفهرس 
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Abstract
Pneumonia is a major infectious disease associated with major morbidity, mortality and healthcare resource utilisation.
Pneumonia is estimated to cause approximately 4 million deaths among children worldwide, with an estimated 146 - 159 million new episodes a year in developing countries.
Since pneumonia is prevalent and is associated with severe morbidity and mortality, it is important to properly diagnose pneumonia, correctly identify any complications or underlying conditions, and treat patients accordingly.
The present study was done to study the common pathogens in community acquired pneumonia among Egyptian children in order to evaluate the role of empirical antibiotic therapy for better patient outcome.
It was conducted on 200 child with pneumonia recruited from pediatric department in Beni-Suef University Hospital, Beni-Suef General Hospital and Beni-Suef Health Insurance Hospital in the period between January 2018 and March 2019.
They were 120(60%) males and 80 (40%) females with male to female ratio of 2:1, their ages ranged between one and 60 month with Mean age of 12.8 ± 14.5 months.
All patients were subjected to history taking, clinical chest examination, and investigations including: Chest x-ray, complete blood count, CRP and sputum culture .
The present study showed that most studied patients (60%) were males. Fever (78.5 %) and cough (76%) were the most frequent symptoms followed by refusal of feeding and dyspnea (45.5% and 40% respectively).
The main auscultatory findings was consonating crepetations in 92.5% of patients and 88.5% of them had wheezy chest .
Radiographic opacities were found in 96.5% of studied patients (56.5%) were broncho pneumonia ,(19%) were lobar pneumonia and (19.5%) were interstitial pneumonia while the rest had normal x-ray appearance ( 3.5%).
The mean hemoglobin level of the studied patients was10.44 gm/ dl. The mean TLC was 12 X 10³/ mm³, CRP titre was +ve in 66% of patients.
A definite pathogen was identified in (60%) of the studied patients from sputum culture .The most frequent organism isolated by culture was pneumococci (17.5%) and Klebsiella (15%).
Atypical bacteria was suspected in 6.5% of patients by high crp levels and –ve sputum culture .