TY - JOUR T1 - Recovery from community acquired pneumonia: the view from the top of the iceberg JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J DO - 10.1183/13993003.00571-2017 VL - 49 IS - 6 SP - 1700571 AU - Grant Waterer Y1 - 2017/06/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/49/6/1700571.abstract N2 - A very common question patients with pneumonia ask is, “When will I be better?” My usual response is a mixture of educated guess and anecdotal experience: “Probably not for 6–8 weeks at least – and it may be longer”, mentally reducing that time frame for younger patients and increasing it for the elderly. Given how fundamentally important this question is for our patients, the study in this issue of the journal by Wootton et al. [1] is particularly welcome. What I am not sure of is whether the study conducted has really answered the question.Recovery from pneumonia is much more complicated than the paper in this issue of the ERJ suggests http://ow.ly/1UlC30bFNLS ER -