ArticleCritical care explorations2021
Bronchoalveolar Lavage Gram Stains for Early Bacterial Identification in Pneumonia: Should They Stay or Should They Go?
Article in Critical care explorations, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed, 5 citations in OpenAlex.
- Emerging point-of-care technologies for bacterial pathogen detection.Journal of Zhejiang University. Science. B · 2026Review
- Serratia sp. traits distinguish the lung microbiome of patients with tuberculosis and non-tuberculous mycobacterial lung diseases.PloS one · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesThe primary endpoint was to determine the sensitivity and specificity of the bronchoalveolar lavage Gram stain in predicting culture results. Secondary endpoints included determining the proportion of Gram stains from bronchoalveolar lavages that accurately identify culture isolates and the duration of antibiotic treatment before bronchoalveolar lavage collection.
designRetrospective, observational study.
settingFour ICUs at a single academic medical center. SUBJECTS: Patients at least 18 years old admitted to an ICU with a diagnosis of pneumonia, collection of a bronchoalveolar lavage sample, and receipt of antibiotics. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN
resultsTwo-hundred five isolates were included. Gram stains for Gram-positive and Gram-negative isolates showed high specificity, 97.3% and 100%, respectively, but lower sensitivity at 61.9% and 54.2%, respectively. The positive predictive value and negative predictive value were 77.2% and 95.7% for Gram-positive isolates and 100% and 84.4% for Gram-negative isolates, respectively. Gram stains correctly identified isolates on the bronchoalveolar lavage culture in 61.9% of Gram-positive organisms and in 54.2% of Gram-negative organisms.
conclusionsGram stains accurately identified causative organisms in a limited number of patients making the utility of the Gram stain an uncertain modality for predicting causative respiratory pathogens from bronchoalveolar lavage samples.
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