Publication

Abstract : Comparing 2 different M-PCR with standard culture of a nonsterile sample like bronchoalveolar lavage is like comparing apples and oranges. The M-PCR is very sensitive, picks up many organisms including colonizers, does not give the colony-forming unit which is critical to determine if the isolate is significant [2], picks up viruses and anaerobes which are usually not investigated in conventional cultures, and last but not the least, does not pick up pathogens like Geotrichum, Mucor, Burkholderia cepacia, Serratia spp, and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia mentioned in the study. Therefore, the study design itself is faulty. The authors need to include organisms that are picked up by both the tests to have a head-to-head comparison.