Usefulness of pan-fungal NASBA test for surveillance of environmental fungal contamination in a protected hematology unit.

A pan-fungal nucleic acid sequence based applification (NASBA) test was adapted and used for the first time to detect and quantify the level of filamentous fungi in environmental samples. Surface samples (n = 356) collected in a controlled air flow hematology ward were tested by mycological culture and the pan-fungal NASBA test. The overall percentage of agreement between culture and NASBA was 88%, the Kappa coefficient was equal to 0.