Assuntos
Educação Médica , Estudantes de Medicina , Humanos , Criança , Escolha da Profissão , Motivação , Inquéritos e QuestionáriosRESUMO
ABSTRACT: In our cohort of 20,947 infants aged 60 days or younger, cerebrospinal fluid Gram stain had a sensitivity of 34.3% (95% confidence interval, 28.1%-41.1%) and a positive predictive value of 61.4% (95% confidence interval, 52.2%-69.8%) for positive cerebrospinal fluid culture, suggesting that Gram stain alone may lead to both underdiagnosis and overdiagnosis of bacterial meningitis.
Assuntos
Meningites Bacterianas , Líquido Cefalorraquidiano , Estudos de Coortes , Humanos , Lactente , Meningites Bacterianas/diagnóstico , Valor Preditivo dos TestesRESUMO
OBJECTIVE: To determine the impact of a cerebrospinal fluid enterovirus polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test performance on hospital length of stay (LOS) in a large multicenter cohort of infants undergoing evaluation for central nervous system infection. STUDY DESIGN: We performed a planned secondary analysis of a retrospective cohort of hospitalized infants ≤60 days of age who had a cerebrospinal fluid culture obtained at 1 of 18 participating centers (2005-2013). After adjustment for patient age and study year as well as clustering by hospital center, we compared LOS for infants who had an enterovirus PCR test performed vs not performed and among those tested, for infants with a positive vs negative test result. RESULTS: Of 19 953 hospitalized infants, 4444 (22.3%) had an enterovirus PCR test performed and 945 (21.3% of tested infants) had positive test results. Hospital LOS was similar for infants who had an enterovirus PCR test performed compared with infants who did not (incident rate ratio 0.98 hours; 95% CI 0.89-1.06). However, infants PCR positive for enterovirus had a 38% shorter LOS than infants PCR negative for enterovirus (incident rate ratio 0.62 hours; 95% CI 0.57-0.68). No infant with a positive enterovirus PCR test had bacterial meningitis (0%; 95% CI 0-0.4). CONCLUSIONS: Although enterovirus PCR testing was not associated with a reduction in LOS, infants with a positive enterovirus PCR test had a one-third shorter LOS compared with infants with a negative enterovirus PCR test. Focused enterovirus PCR test use could increase the impact on LOS for infants undergoing cerebrospinal fluid evaluation.