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Clinical Investigations: Infections: ArticlesTransbronchial Biopsy in the Diagnosis of Pulmonary Infiltrates in Immunocompromised Patients
Section snippets
Study Population
At the General Hospital of Verona, 142 immunocompromised patients underwent bronchoscopy for the investigation of 157 episodes of pulmonary infiltration from 1987 to 1992. Further, 18 patients with similar conditions underwent bronchoscopy in the same study period but were not considered in the comparative evaluation here concerned, because BAL only was performed in these patients.
The study population described here is limited to patients who had an established diagnosis of an immunosuppressant
Results
The results are summarized in Table 1, and the specific pulmonary disorders diagnosed in each group of patients are listed in Table 2 together with the diagnostic yields, respectively, obtained by TBB and BAL in each disorder here encountered.
Discussion
Pulmonary infiltrates are frequently a diagnostic challenge in immunocompromised patients and invasive techniques often are used in the diagnostic process. In the present study, we evaluated the diagnostic usefulness and safety of TBB in three groups of patients with different underlying immunodeficiencies, whose pulmonary infiltrates were not etiologically recognized by simple sputum-based investigations and failed to clear with an empiric wide-spectrum antibiotic therapy. All the patients
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