A 7-year-old boy is admitted to the general paediatric ward with bacterial community acquired pneumonia affecting the right lower lobe. It is suggested on the ward round that we arrange chest physiotherapy to try to reduce the length of his hospital stay. We wonder if there is evidence to support the use of physiotherapy in this case.

Structured clinical question

In a child with community acquired pneumonia [patient], does chest physiotherapy [intervention] reduce the length of hospital admission [outcome]?

Search strategy and outcome

Search date: March 2007.

Cochrane Library using “pneumonia and child* and physiotherapy” revealed 19 results but none of these were relevant.

Pubmed using the same search terms revealed 110 articles. Eleven of these were relevant, but only two were available in English (six in Russian, one in French, one in German and one in Italian). One was a randomised control trial1 and one was a case series.2

PEDro …