[Description and study of the etiology of a community outbreak of atypical pneumonia in L'Espluga de Francolí, Tarragona].

BACKGROUND

A community outbreak of atypical pneumonia occurred in summer 1994 in L'Espluga de Francolí, Tarragona, Spain, affecting 20 people.

PATIENTS AND

METHODS

The clinical and epidemiologic description of the outbreak are performed, as well as the sanitary actions leading to the discovery of the original focus (an hotel refrigerating tower). Through case-control studies (among the 17 in-home contagions according to their nearness) and using the causality criteria of Evans and Bradford-Hill.

RESULTS

Although the symptomatical description brings forth new symptoms such as hyperglycemia or livedo reticularis, the comparative clinical-therapeutical study bears no significant differences with other series, and the radiological data as well as the response to the treatment are wholly overlapping, with results less coincident in those coming from the lab, very specially due to the small sensibility the indirect immuno-fluorescence showed.

CONCLUSIONS

The epidemiologic study demonstrates the etiology of the outbreak (Legionella), their source in the refrigerating tower, in so much sterilization coincided with the end of the epidemy.