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The most serious of all infections of the respiratory tract in terms of morbidity, mortality, and cost is pneumonia. It is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, accounting for 600,000 hospital admissions and 64 million days of restricted activity each year. Pneumonia, Sir William Osler's "captain of the men of death," is an illness that is subject to great variation in all aspects of its management: hospital admission rates for pneumonia differ by a factor of four to five from one county to the next; the length of stay, even in this era of managed care,
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