Comparison between mortality and airway colonization vs noncolonization with Candida species in critically ill adults

We thank Dr Browne and colleagues for their interest in our article and for sharing the results of their work, which we in turn read with great interest. Their results corroborate those of Azoulay et al [1], which we cite in our article. Their results also underline the current lack of data as regards to the role of respiratory tract Candida species in specific subsets of intensive care unit (ICU) patients. This is further supported by Wood et al [2] who found similar mortality rates between critically ill trauma patients with a clinical suspicion of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) associated with the presence of Candida species in respiratory tract secretions and historic controls (17% vs 18%). These findings are also contrary to ours, but trauma patients composed only 26.6% of our study population [3]. All of these results suggest that patient characteristics other than clinical suspicion of VAP might influence the impact of respiratory tract Candida species. Dr Browne and colleagues discuss mortality; yet, other relevant clinical outcomes may be evaluated in critically ill patients with and without Candida species recovered from respiratory tract culture specimens. Our study showed longer