Abstract

Downloaded from http://jcm.asm.org/ on December 12, 2011 by deepdyve Receive: RSS Feeds, eTOCs, free email alerts (when new articles cite this article), more» Information about commercial reprint orders: http://jcm.asm.org/site/misc/reprints.xhtml To subscribe to to another ASM Journal go to: http://journals.asm.org/site/subscriptions/ JOURNAL OF CLINICAL MICROBIOLOGY, Nov. 1995, p. 3080 0095-1137/95/$04.00 0 Vol. 33, No. 11 Letters to the Editor I read with interest the reported study of Khatib et al. (1) on the relevance of culturing Candida species from intravascular catheters (IVC). The authors are somewhat dismissive of the role of culturing IVC from patients with systemic candidiasis; however, their conclusions that mere isolation of Candida species from an IVC is not a predictor of invasive disease and that the clinical value of isolating Candida species from an IVC is limited are neither fully supported by their own data nor supported by a recent prospective multicenter study (2). Khatib et al. (1) were able to demonstrate in their retrospective study that patients who had positive ( 15 CFU of Candida species in the roll-out culture of the catheter tip) cultures (n 45) subsequently developed candidemia in one case and invasive candidiasis in another two cases and that those with negative