الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Mycoses are life-threatening opportunistic infections and have emerged as a major cause of morbidity and mortality in critically ill patients. The development of pulmonary mycosis requires host’s predisposing factors such as allergic status (asthma), airways diseases (bronchial dilatation, cystic fibrosis), chronic lung cavities (tuberculosis) or immune deficiency. Hospitalized patients, especially those in intensive care units (ICUs), are often inappropriately placed on broad-spectrum antibiotic drugs because fungal diseases involving Candida spp. are not routinely diagnosed. Diagnosis of fungal infection is difficult and challenging as clinical manifestations are non-specific, the lack of availability and underuse of non-culture fungal diagnostics results in overprescribing, prescription of unduly long courses of antibacterial agents, and excess empirical use of antifungal agents and leaves many millions of patients with undiagnosed fungal infections. Thus, it is clearly now that it is urgent to search for an alternative diagnostic approach that may be specific, sensitive and quick. The detection of galactomannan (GM) antigen and detection of fungal DNA by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method have. |