COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF BIOFIRE PNEUMONIA PANEL AND STANDARD CULTURE IN CRITICALLY ILL PNEUMONIA CASES AND ITS IMPACT ON ANTIMICROBIAL STEWARDSHIP

Pneumonia remains one of the most common and life-threatening infections encountered in the intensive care unit. Defining the microbiological cause of lower respiratory tract infections is challenging. Antibiotics administered for suspected pneumonia are often empirically prescribed and might be unnecessarily broad-spectrum or not needed at all for some patients. Contrarily in some delays in pathogen-specific, appropriate antimicrobial therapy have reported in extremely high mortality.  The available data show that rapid molecular diagnostics provide evidence-based opportunities for diagnosing microbiological cause and antimicrobial stewardship interventions . As the biofire is comparatively newer modality of testing its efficacy, cost justification and impact on clinical outcome needs to be further evaluated in the Indian set up.