Back
Full-text
Journal article

Predictive value of bronchoalveolar lavage in excluding a diagnosis of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia during prophylaxis with aerosolized pentamidine.

Show more…
  • 1993-04-01
Published in:
  • Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. - 1993
AIDS-Related Opportunistic Infections
Administration, Intranasal
Adult
Aerosols
Bronchoalveolar Lavage Fluid
Dapsone
Female
Follow-Up Studies
Humans
L-Lactate Dehydrogenase
Male
Middle Aged
Pentamidine
Pneumocystis
Pneumonia, Pneumocystis
Predictive Value of Tests
Prospective Studies
Trimethoprim
Trimethoprim, Sulfamethoxazole Drug Combination
English We assessed the negative predictive value of bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) for Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) during prophylaxis with aerosolized pentamidine. On the basis of the assumption that undiagnosed and untreated PCP would progress and become clinically apparent, for 3 months we prospectively followed 34 consecutive cases in which BAL had not detected PCP. All patients were immunodeficient, had a symptomatic human immunodeficiency virus infection, and were evaluated for possible PCP during prophylaxis with aerosolized pentamidine. No transbronchial biopsies were performed. In 32 of 34 cases, a diagnosis of PCP could be excluded because of other definite diagnoses or improvement during the follow-up. Despite negative results of an examination of their BAL fluid, two patients received empirical treatment that was active against PCP; these patients were regarded as possibly having undiagnosed PCP. Thus, the negative predictive value of BAL alone was at least 94% (32 of 34 cases) in excluding a diagnosis of PCP during prophylaxis with aerosolized pentamidine.
Language
  • English
Open access status
green
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/185591
Statistics
Document views: 35 File downloads:
  • Full-text: 0