Intensive care medicine
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Intensive care medicine · Feb 2004
Multicenter Study Comparative StudyClinical pulmonary infection score for ventilator-associated pneumonia: accuracy and inter-observer variability.
Although quantitative microbiological cultures of samples obtained by bronchoscopy are considered the most specific tool for diagnosing ventilator-associated pneumonia, this labor-intensive invasive technique is not widely used. The Clinical Pulmonary Infection Score (CPIS), a diagnostic algorithm that relies on easily available clinical, radiographic, and microbiological criteria, could be an attractive alternative for diagnosing ventilator-associated pneumonia. Initially, the CPIS scoring system was validated upon 40 quantitative cultures of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid from 28 patients, and only few other studies have evaluated this scoring system since then. Therefore, little is known about the accuracy of this score. ⋯ When compared to quantitative cultures of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid, the CPIS has a low sensitivity and specificity for diagnosing ventilator-associated pneumonia with considerable inter-observer variability.