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What are the common locations of round pneumonia?
Posterior and lower lobes. Superior segment of the lower lobe is most commonly encountered.
When does round pneumonia usually present?
It is a disease of childhood. The mean age of presentation is 5 years and 90% of patients are less than 12.
Why do children get round pneumonia rather than lobar pneumonia?
Children have less well developed collateral pathways of ventilation (pores of Kohn, channels of Lambert) than adults. This limit the regional spread of infection and produce a rounded confluent region of consolidation.
What is the appropriate management strategy of round pneumonia?
In the context of age group, infective respiratory symptoms and characteristic appearances, further imaging is not necessary. Follow up imaging is only required if there is failure of symptom resolution with appropriate antibiotic therapy. The majority of treated round pneumonia will resolve within a month (30 days).
Seen traversing the rounded, ill-defined opacity in the right lung are branching linear lucencies (blue arrows) typical of air bronchogram - representing air filled larger airways surrounded by consolidated lung.