Pneumonia is one of the most common and severe infections in childhood worldwide, accounting for approximately 20% of deaths in the first five years of life. Further, acute respiratory infections are the leading cause of children requiring medical care. Most respiratory infections primarily affect the upper respiratory tract. However, the majority of children also experience a more dangerous lower respiratory tract infection within their first year of life.

Additionally, pneumonia remains one of the most frequent indications for prescribing antibiotics. In the era of increasing antibiotic resistance and considering economic aspects, evidence-based management of CAP in childhood and adolescence is particularly important. However, despite the medical and economic relevance of CAP, the data available at the time of initiating the pedCAPNETZ study was limited. There was a lack of data for Germany and Europe regarding the epidemiology of CAP, disease progression, as well as the spectrum of pathogens and resistance patterns in children. The few existing studies were often conducted on small, often very specific cohorts and therefore had limited significance. Treatment recommendations for children with CAP still primarily relied on studies from the 1980s and 1990s, which had relatively low levels of evidence. The need to improve the data situation was evident, and the motivation was accordingly high.

The goals were ambitious. The central motivation of the pedCAPNETZ study was to significantly improve the data foundation on the etiology, epidemiology, and diagnosis of CAP in children and adolescents in developed economies by establishing a sufficiently large cohort of children and adolescents with CAP in Germany. Additionally, relevant insights into risk factors for severe CAP, clinically prognostic markers, biomarkers, as well as the spectrum of causative pathogens were to be gained. The content and organizational structure were modeled after the CAPNETZ study on CAP in adults, which had already proven successful.