CAPNETZ identifies unmet neds in the area of community-acquired pneumonia

In December, experts in the field of community-acquired pneumonia met to jointly identify unmet needs and discuss possible solutions.

Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is usually treated by general practitioners or pneumologists outside of university hospitals. It is, therefore, difficult to systemically analyze important information on disease progression and treatment, which are relevant for the future development of CAP care.

The medical competence network on community-acquired pneumonia, CAPNETZ for short, closes this gap. In the project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, a study platform has been set up that makes it possible to uniformly document CAP cases, which are usually dealt with outside of university hospitals. In its more than 15-year history, CAPNETZ has brought together the world's largest CAP patient cohort and pioneered the research field. With the founding of the CAPNETZ FOUNDATION in 2007 CAPNETZ was able to reposition itself and continue its successful research. In addition to the Hannover Medical School, the founders are the Charitè and the University of Ulm.

In December, the members of the CAPNETZ STIFTUNG Board of Directors and Foundation Board as well as other selected CAP scientists came together to jointly identify open issues in CAP research and to discuss how the CAPNETZ database can help answer these questions. In the run-up to the meeting, the scientists within CAPNETZ were asked to name unmet needs on topics such as vaccines, diagnostics and co-morbidity. Subsequently, more than 30 internationally leading scientists in CAP research were asked for their differentiated opinion. The open questions collected from this multi-stage process were discussed by the CAPNETZ experts in December.

In addition to pulmonologists, doctors and scientists from infectiology, microbiology and radiology were included. The extensive discussion provided many starting points for further studies and an expansion of the data collected in CAPNETZ. It is planned to publish the results of this meeting in order to provide further impulses for the progression of CAP research.

 

Text: BREATH / CD

Picture: CAPNETZ STIFTUNG