INTRODUCTION
CAP, deaths
COMMUNITY-ACQUIRED PNEUMONIA
Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is one of the leading causes of hospital admissions and deaths in the world (The introduction of syndromic molecular assays with broad panels targeting common respiratory tract pathogens improves the microbiological yield and time to results when analyzing specimens from the lower respiratory tract (LRT) (Three recent studies have evaluated the performance of syndromic PCR panels for CAP on samples from the upper respiratory tract (URT) (OP samples are easier and faster to obtain than both LRT- and NP samples. OP samples have demonstrated a higher sensitivity than NP samples for detection of atypical bacteria, but only a few studies with discordant results have examined the utility of OP samples for the detection of other CAP-related bacteria (