Wikipedia:Peer review/Pneumonia/archive2

Pneumonia

Article has recently been improved a lot by the medicine collaboration of the week. Would be nice to get some feedback especially from people with a non-medical background. The article has had a peer review before that has been archived here. Hope to get some good feedback and maybe this could be a FAC soon. --WS 23:37, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. :) This is a comprehensive article that was, for the most part, easy for a person with a non-medical background to read. I felt that the exception was the section called Causes of pneumonia; I can't decide if it's all the Latin phrases with no explanation, or the density of the links that's causing me a problem. I am thinking that making that section into an annotated list, or perhaps changing up the prose a bit to make it less link-heavy and with a bit more contextual information, would be helpful.

One other set of comments I will offer have nothing to do with the prose itself; it's the pictures. They're well-chosen and generally quite clear. I would say that it would create some more visual interest on the page to not have them all on the right side. And this last bit is especially nit-picky, but -- the first diagram is very clear, but to read it, I had to navigate away from the main page because some of the text was too small to read at that resolution, and it took a bit for the bigger one to load. When one is on a slow Internet connection or at a public terminal, waiting for the larger version of that picture to load up may cause some users to log off altogether.

I hope this didn't come off as too negative; I am relatively new to peer review. :) Feel free to comment on my talk page for any other questions/concerns. --Jacqui ^★ 05:08, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Don't apologize! Thank you for the input; if there were no criticisms, then the article would not get any better. I've worked on the layout - I had never experimented with the left side of the page, so you ended up opening a whole new world for me! The lead image is only 65kb, so I think it's more of a wikipedia loading issue. I went back to see if I could make all the words large enough on the original image and I think it would be too crowded, unfortunately. As for the causes of pneumonia, I am a bit unhappy with it as well. With over 100 microorganisms we could put there, choosing the important themes and some notable exceptions has been difficult. I'll give it another shot, though. Thanks again! InvictaHOG 15:02, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've expanded the causes section a little. It can't ever be clear of Latin/Greek, but hopefully it reads a little better now with some explanation! InvictaHOG 16:42, 29 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It looks quite good with the slight exception of the Pathophysiology section that has the odd bulleted-sections format, which is at variance with the format of the remainder. I didn't see anything in the article addressing the issue of reoccurance, which supposedly significantly increases your odds of acquiring pneumonia again once you've had it. Did I miss that somewhere? If not, could you cover that topic? Thanks. — RJH 14:57, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I converted the bullets into subheadings. I also added a sentence under Epidemiology addressing recurrence. Typically occurs because of an underlying predisposition to pneumonia. Let me know if you think that it deserves more mention - it's really more a matter of an underlying problem increasing risk InvictaHOG 15:10, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This would be a good topic for an FA. My notes:

FACs are always hit hard for any and all one-sentence paragraphs (two isn't good either) and one- or two-paragraph sections or subsections. It always hurts a little to see the "cleanly organized outline" sink into the background, but merging the sections and replacing the subheadings, where needed, with text does usually make an article read better.
I personally was surprised at the shortness of the "treatment" section. Particularly the very brief mention of mechanical ventilization. Eh, maybe it's just a personal bias: my wife was hospitalized with pneumonia at the beginning of the year and was kept under, on ventilation, for 10 days. Still, maybe there is something more that could be said.
I'd lose the "See also" section and rely on those links being in the text. It can actually be a little POV-ish deciding what class of related topics are the important ones that make it into that list.
I'd rename ==References== to ==Notes== and ==General references== to ==References==; at least, I think that's more typical. Maybe in medical articles it's not, though. Look around, see how recently featured articles do it, and try for consistency.
The article needs some in-depth copyediting, fixing grammar and flow throughout.

—Bunchofgrapes (talk) 04:33, 29 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the input! I've ditched the see also and started to copyedit. The multiple sclerosis article we just finished used the references heading and it's certainly more in keeping with medical literature. I'll see if I can find better examples, though. I'm working on the section thing. I can certainly rearrange the complications and classification sections. What do you think about the pathophysiolgy section? I think it's fine with different sections because of the links to individual article. As for treatment, you're tempting us! We expect to expand the ventilator-associated pneumonia in the future to better cover the topic. At this point, there's so much more to be said about treatment that it's probably best to leave just the most common situations in. Luckily, pneumonia requiring ventilator support is quite rare. Not that it mattered to your wife, I understand... InvictaHOG 16:42, 29 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome! Regarding the pathophysiology section: I think if a topic is extensive enough to have a separate article on it (and be linked in the "Main article: foobar" fashion), then it should merit a few paragraphs in a parent article like this. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 21:48, 29 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I just finished an article on ventilator-associated pneumonia - probably not as applicable to your wife, but an important part of the pneumonia set of articles nonetheless! InvictaHOG 03:55, 1 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, definitely. There was always worry of a reinfection. Didn't happen, but I still don't recommend long-term ventilation as a hobby :-) —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 04:02, 1 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My thoughts:

Initial description as a disease characterized by fluid in the alveoli sounds a bit odd to my ears. I am used to thinking of pneumonia as and inflamation or infection of the small airways and alveoli, which can lead to fluid accumulation.
Some sections seem to assume bacerial pneumonia with only passing reference to viral eiologies.
There is a paragraph about treatment under the heading "hospital acquired pneumonias" which seems out of place.
Aspiration pneumonia is a common problem in hospitalized patients, but it is only mentioned in passing in the article.
Epidemiology section could perhaps consolidate information on common etiologies/organisms versus age, hospital status, etc.

Osmodiar 07:03, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback! I've started making some changes, moving treatment out of the hospital-acquired section, etc. I added inflammation to the initial line - most definitions hinge on consolidation of the air spaces. Since it's due to inflammation in every case I can think of, seems reasonable to add it in. All in all, pneumonia is a horrible term to cover. There's a multitude of vastly different disease states which share the name. We tried to focus on the most common types. So, we mostly speak about bacterial pneumonia. If there's any particular place we could expand on the other types, let us know! As for aspiration, all infectious pneumonia is caused by aspiration (except for IVDU, etc). In a way, the important thing is the host and his/her flora. We chose not to cover aspiration pneumonitis because, frankly, it's a different disease entity. I'll work on the epidemiology section. Thanks for your help; check back and let us know how we do! InvictaHOG 08:12, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]