Improving ED Patient Management with the BioFire® FilmArray® System

Dr. Sameer Desai is an emergency medicine physician in Lexington, Kentucky, where he uses the BioFire® FilmArray® Respiratory Panel (RP) and the BioFire® FilmArray® Meningitis/Encephalitis (ME) Panel to help improve patient management in the emergency department.

Using the BioFire RP to overcome “that fear that something was being missed”

After undergoing several tests at a different institution and leaving without a diagnosis, a young child was brought to Dr. Desai’s emergency room for a second opinion. Dr. Desai used the BioFire RP to help identify the causative virus so the family could take the child home “without having that fear that something was being missed the whole time.”

How the BioFire ME Panel “changed which direction we went with the patient”

Dr. Desai used the BioFire ME Panel to help determine that an infant’s meningitis symptoms were being caused by enterovirus. This rapid result “definitely changed which direction we went with the patient,” he said. Instead of receiving antibiotics while waiting for culture results, the infant was able to return home later that day after observation in the ER.

BioFire’s symptom-driven tests rapidly detect viruses, bacteria,
parasites, fungi, and antimicrobial resistance genes.

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