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I am a microbiologist from apollo hospital Bangalore India,we are reporting H.influenza and also the antibiogram of it in patients <3yrs of age in the abscnce of any symptoms related to phryngites,so tell us what is the crieteria to follow when reporting this organism in throat swab and in sputum,please.
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Thank you for your question regarding the reporting of Haemophilus influenzae from respiratory cultures. As you know, this organism is part of the normal respiratory tract flora. There is no evidence that it causes pharyngitis in patients of any age. Thus in my laboratory we do not report H influenzae from pharyngeal (throat) specimens nor would we perform antimicrobial susceptibility testing on such isolates.
H influenzae, especially encapsulated strains, is a potential cause of pneumonia. Accordingly, a well-collected sputum specimen exhibiting predominant growth of encapsulated H influenzae may be clinically significant. Preferable would be culture of a specimen collected in a manner to bypass contamination with upper respiratory tract flora. In this case we would identify the organism to the species level, perform serotyping if it is H influenzae, and report antimicrobial susceptibility results.
Joseph M. Campos, PhD. DABMM
Director, Microbiology Laboratory and Laboratory Informatics
Children's National Medical Center
Washington, DC (USA)
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