A comparison of bronchoscopic vs blind protected specimen brush sampling in patients with suspected ventilator-associated pneumonia.

BACKGROUND: Pneumonia is a common complication in patients undergoing mechanical ventilation and increases ICU mortality. The clinical diagnosis of ventilator-associated, however, pneumonia is unreliable, and many consider bronchoscopic-directed protected specimen brush sampling and quantitative culture the diagnostic method of choice. Bronchoscopy, however, is expensive and not readily available in many ICUs.
OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that "blind" protected specimen brush (PSB) sampling may produce results similar to that of bronchoscopic-directed sampling.
SETTING: The medical ICU of a university-affiliated teaching hospital. INTERVENTION: Patients with suspected ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) who had not received antibiotics for at least 48 h underwent "blind" and bronchoscopic-directed PSB sampling with quantitative culture.
RESULTS: Fifty-five paired PSB specimens were obtained from 53 patients. There was an 85% quantitative agreement between the blind and bronchoscopic-directed specimens. The agreement was independent of the bronchopulmonary segment from which the bronchoscopic sampling was directed.
CONCLUSION: The results of this study are consistent with the notion that blind PSB sampling and quantitative culture may prove to be a useful, cost-effective, and minimally invasive method of diagnosing VAP.