ArticleEuropean journal of clinical microbiology & infectious diseases : official publication of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology2019
Culture of all sputum samples irrespective of quality adds value to the diagnosis of pneumococcal community-acquired pneumonia in the elderly.
Article in European journal of clinical microbiology & infectious diseases : official publication of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT04595526 (Optimal Collection of Specimens of the Lower Respiratory Tract), which is not on this map. Cited by 13 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Optimal Collection of Specimens of the Lower Respiratory Tract
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Association between antimicrobial regimens and 28-day mortality in patients withMicrobiology spectrum · 2026Article
- Evolving Approaches to Bacterial Identification: A Review of Classical and Modern Techniques.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Molecular Epidemiology of Carbapenem-ResistantAntibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- The impact of sputum sample quality on sputum culture results: a retrospective analysis of clinical microbiology sputum culture data spanning 10 years.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Risk factors and prediction model for chronic bacterial infection in stable bronchiectasis in Shanghai, China.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- Article
- Severe aspiration pneumonia in the elderly.Journal of intensive medicine · 2024Review
- The impact of increasing non-albicans Candida trends on diagnostics in immunocompromised patients.Brazilian journal of microbiology : [publication of the Brazilian Society for Microbiology] · 2023Article
- The diagnostic utility of microscopic quality assessment of sputum samples in the era of rapid syndromic PCR testing.Microbiology spectrum · 2023Article
- Molecular Characterization and Antibiogram ofHealthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Rapid syndromic PCR testing in patients with respiratory tract infections reduces time to results and improves microbial yield.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- The Distribution ofFrontiers in medicine · 2022Article
- Infections in the older population: what do we know?Aging clinical and experimental research · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Culture of expectorated sputum in the microbiological diagnosis of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is considered valid only if high-quality (HQ) samples are obtained, but evidence regarding pneumococcal etiology specifically is lacking. We studied 323 radiologically confirmed CAP cases in patients aged ≥ 65 years. Sputum samples were assessed for quality microscopically and cultured. Two quality criteria sets were applied to delineate HQ from low-quality (LQ) sputa: leukocytes/epithelial cells ratio > 5 and ≤ 2.5 epithelial cells/400× magnification field (HQ1), or leukocytes/epithelial cells ratio > 1 (HQ2). A sputum sample was obtained and the quality assessed in 224 cases; 47% were HQ1 and 76% HQ2. Encapsulated pneumococci (EPnc) were cultured in 25 (24%), 14 (12%), 35 (21%), and 4 (7%) of the HQ1-, LQ1-, HQ2-, and LQ2-samples, respectively. If another pneumococcal test (blood culture, urine antigen, or ≥ twofold increase in CbpA or PsaA antibodies) was positive, EPnc were cultured at similar proportions in HQ1- and LQ1-sputa; if the other test was negative, EPnc were cultured less often in LQ1- than HQ1-sputa. EPnc were found less often in LQ2- than in HQ2-sputa. Our results suggest similar specificity in LQ- and HQ-sputum cultures. All sputum samples add value to the pneumococcal CAP-diagnosis in the elderly.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.