Background: Respiratory tract infection (RTI) in young children is a leading cause of morbidity and hospitalization\nworldwide. There are few studies assessing the performance for bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) versus oropharyngeal\nswab (OPS) specimens in microbiological findings for children with RTI. The primary purpose of this study was to compare\nthe detection rates of OPS and paired BALF in detecting key respiratory pathogens using suspension microarray.\nMethods: We collected paired OPS and BALF specimens from 76 hospitalized children with respiratory illness. The samples\nwere tested simultaneously for 8 respiratory viruses and 5 bacteria by suspension microarray.\nResults: Of 76 paired specimens, 62 patients (81.6%) had at least one pathogen. BALF and OPS identified respiratory\npathogen infections in 57 (75%) and 49 (64.5%) patients, respectively (P > 0.05). The etiology analysis revealed that viruses\nwere responsible for 53.7% of the patients, whereas bacteria accounted for 32.9% and Mycoplasma pneumoniae for 13.4%.\nThe leading 5 pathogens identified were respiratory syncytial virus, Streptococcus pneumoniaee, Haemophilus influenzae,\nMycoplasma pneumoniae and adenovirus, and they accounted for 74.2% of etiological fraction. For detection of any\npathogen, the overall detection rate of BALF (81%) was marginally higher than that (69%) of OPS (p = 0.046). The\ndifferences in the frequency distribution and sensitivity for most pathogens detected by two sampling methods were not\nstatistically significant.\nConclusions: In this study, BALF and OPS had similar microbiological yields. Our results indicated the clinical value of OPS\ntesting in pediatric patients with respiratory illness.
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