To study and compare the role of bronchoscopic protected specimen brush biopsy and blind endotracheal aspiration for diagnosis of VAP.

A prospective comparative study was conducted in multidisciplinary ICU of a tertiary care hospital.Thirty patients clinically diagnosed to have VAP, were further evaluated by bronchoscopic and blind endotracheal aspiration. The p value of bronchoscopic and blind aspiration techniques were calculated, taking clinical pulmonary infection score (CPIS) of ≥6 as reference standard.

Our study shows that for the diagnosis of VAP, bronchoscopic brush and blind aspiration had chi square value of 0.83 with degree of freedom 1 which showed p value of 0.3623 which is not significant. T test value is 0.402 with degree of freedom 1 and p value of 0.7567 which is still not significant. There was a good microbiologic concordance among bronchoscopic and non-bronchoscopic distal airway sampling techniques.

Blind endotracheal aspiration is an inexpensive, easy, and comparable technique for bacteriological diagnosis of VAP.