• Community-acquired pneumonia
• severe pneumonia
• complicated pneumonia
• childhood
• paediatric lung disease
• respiratory infection
• tuberculosis
• viral infection

In their letter, Thomas and Spencer1 claim that our assertion that Staphylococcus aureus is the most important cause of necrotising pneumonia2 is wrong on the basis of the most recent evidence and that Streptococcus pneumoniae is currently the major cause.1 However, although the studies cited by them document an increase in the incidence of …