Bacterial Burden in Critically Injured Ventilated Patients Does Not Correlate with Progression to Pneumonia.

Background: Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is common in critically injured patients. The pathogenesis of VAP is not completely understood. We hypothesized that mechanically ventilated trauma patients who develop pneumonia have a progressive increase in pathogen burden over the course of ventilation until a threshold for symptomatic pneumonia is reached, leading to clinical suspicion of VAP.