“If it’s viral, it usually takes care of itself,” says Dr. The type of pneumonia you have will determine what kind of treatment you’ll get. “When you have chest pain and you can’t breathe and you know something’s really not right, the best place to be is in a monitored hospital setting,” says Dr. The same goes if you believe you have COVID-19, and your symptoms get noticeably worse. If that’s the case, you should head to the doctor’s office ASAP. Edelman, which could imply a more serious bacterial pneumonia. “Getting worse” could include symptoms like high fevers, bad headaches, and severe chest pain, says Dr. If it gets worse, see your doctor immediately.” “If it seems like an ordinary cold and there’s a cough associated with it and you’re otherwise not sick, I think you can wait a week before you see your doctor. With pneumonia, on the other hand, they’ll either remain consistent or become more severe. Those symptoms-along with the cough or fever you might be experiencing-will usually go away pretty quickly. Increased phlegm that’s green, grey, or yellow in colorīut the common cold will usually have other symptoms that pneumonia won’t, like a sore throat or runny nose,” says Jonathan Puchalski, M.D., director of interventional pulmonology at Yale Medicine.
Chest pain during breathing or coughing.Pneumonia can look a lot like the common cold from the outside. “We make that distinction because the bugs that cause these two types of pneumonia tend to be different and treated differently,” says Dr. Then there is hospital-acquired pneumonia, which is the kind you pick up while staying in the hospital or at a chronic care facility, like a nursing home or rehab center. Bacterial and viral pneumonia are contagious, so you can pick it up from someone’s stray cough or sneeze, by sharing cups, or not washing your hands as often as you should. Overall, it’s divided into two different categories: community-acquired pneumonia and hospital acquired pneumonia, says Norman Edelman, M.D., senior scientific advisor to the American Lung Association.Ĭommunity-acquired pneumonia can be acquired anywhere, anytime. Pneumonia can be contracted tons of different ways, from inhalation of fumes to living in a moldy building. That’s because certain organisms, like those associated with the flu, can be particularly hostile or invade your body in large numbers. This basically means that a foreign bug takes over your immune system, even if you’re generally healthy. “Pneumonia develops if the organism overwhelms the patient’s host defenses,” says Dr. The novel coronavirus, of course, can also cause pneumonia, albeit one with a longer incubation period than, say, the flu, says Dr. Influenza is also a key virus that can spur pneumonia, and fungi can be a culprit, too. “The other half the time, it’s due to viruses.” The most common type of pneumonia is caused by the bacteria streptococcus pneumoniae, in the same family of bacteria that causes strep throat. “About half the time, it’s due to bacteria,” says Dr.
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