BioFire® FilmArray® Pneumonia Panel versus bacterial culture in adult community acquired pneumonia: treatment implications
Abstract
English:
Background
Severe community-acquired pneumonia (sCAP) is a growing burden on public health, associated with high morbidity and mortality. The diversity of aetiological agents requires that current guidelines consider the potential benefit of using rapid molecular techniques for microbial diagnosis as part of sCAP management.
Objective
This study aimed to assess the diagnostic performance of BioFire® FilmArray® Pneumonia Panel (BFPP) versus standard-of-care (SOC) culture for rapidly detecting respiratory pathogens and genetic markers among patients with sCAP.
Methods
The study was conducted on 236 patients with sCAP; lower respiratory tract (LRT) specimens were investigated by both BFPP and SOC, and the results were compared regarding the diagnostic performance, their related resistance genes and their effect on patient outcomes.
Results
BFPP showed an overall sensitivity of 81.97% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 73.98–88.34) and an overall specificity of 94.44% (95% CI: 93.59–95.21) over SOC. The 214 resistance genes detected by BFPP enabled rapid initiation of targeted antimicrobial therapy.
Conclusion
BFPP can enhance rapid microbiological diagnosis of patients with sCAP for early implementation of precision antimicrobial therapy, improving both morbidity and mortality. However, BFPP does not detect fungal pathogens, which is an important limitation in some clinical situations.
© 2025 Samir Mohamed Mahmoud Fahyim, Hesham Atef AbdelHalim, Heba Helmy AboElNaga, Rania Talaat Abdel Haleem, El Shaimaa Sabry Mohammed Hassan, published by Romanian Society of Pneumology
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.