Children with Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia and acute hypoxaemic respiratory failure admitted to a PICU, Durban, South Africa

Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia (PcP) is placing increasing demands on the limited paediatric intensive care resources in developing countries.1 Despite mechanical ventilation, the short term outcomes of these cases remain poor.2 3 To help rationally allocate scarce resources, we retrospectively evaluated the short and medium term survival of children with PcP admitted to a paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) over the 3-year period 2000–2002 with a view to identifying prognostic factors for a poor outcome. Cases of PcP …