Demographic and Clinical Characteristics
Children had a median age at culture collection of 2.8 years (IQR:
1.4-5.5, Table 1 ). Children were medically complex, with 30.7%
having 7 or more CCCs. One quarter (26.1%) of children had comorbid
BPD/CLDI. Two-thirds of cultures obtained (69.5%) were for children
with current or previous chronic home ventilator use. Most cultures were
obtained via sterile tracheal aspirate technique (61.4%) and collected
during a hospital encounter (83.1%).
Cultures obtained with an accompanying ARI diagnosis were more frequent
for children who were younger (2.3 years vs. 2.9 years,
p<0.001), publicly insured (60.7% vs 53.5%,
p<0.001), and without a diagnosis of BPD/CLDI (23.7% vs
27.0%, p<0.001) as compared with children with no ARI
diagnosis (Table 1 ). Cultures obtained during ARI were also
more frequent among children with 7+ CCCs (38.3% vs 28.0%,
p<0.001). Differences in encounter and department at
collection were observed, with cultures collected during ARI being less
frequently obtained during an office visit, laboratory visit (i.e.,
specimen collection only visit), and in the bronchoscopy suite or
post-anesthesia care unit (PACU). Cultures collected during ARI were
much more frequently TA specimens (83.9%) versus BAL specimens, while
cultures collected without ARI were only slightly more frequently TA
specimens (53.6%, p<0.001, Table 1 ).
Most (77%) encounters with ARI diagnosis also met bARI diagnosis
criteria (Table 1 ). Cultures obtained in children with bARI
diagnosis were similar to those with ARI diagnosis, except that BPD/CLDI
diagnosis was less frequent among with bARI (21.7%), PACU location was
less frequent (1.6%), and TA specimen type was more frequent (90.2%,Table 1 ).