Microbiologic diagnosis of bacterial lower respiratory tract infection in children is difficult because invasive diagnostic approaches, such as bronchoscopy or lung biopsy,¹ are usually not available for children. Previously, we showed the usefulness of a semiquantitative culture using sputum obtained from children.² However, this method requires sputum to be washed three times to reduce bacteria from the upper respiratory tract, and is tedious to perform as routine laboratory work. The purpose of our present study was to evaluate a simplified culture method for identifying causative pathogens in childhood lower respiratory tract infection.

We studied 268 children who were admitted to …