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Jo-Anne H. Young, Identification of Pathogenic Fungi, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Volume 59, Issue 7, 1 October 2014, Pages 1044–1045, https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciu482
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Identification of Pathogenic Fungi presents, with incredible clarity, the morphologic characteristics of infecting eukaryotic organisms within the kingdom Fungi. These organisms are regularly found in cultures and tissue specimens in clinical laboratories, because immunocompromised patients are increasing in numbers and are no longer seen in just a few tertiary care referral centers.
This is the second edition of the manual, the first having been published in 1996. Advances in therapy for cancers and autoimmune conditions, and improvement in transplantation techniques, have permitted steroid-sparing states of prolonged exogenous immunosuppression. These patients expect that they will go on to live normal lives concurrent with chronic use of immune system–altering agents. They face a full range of fungal organism exposures from jobs, hobbies, animals, and travel. Episodes of fever and/or lung field infiltrates now have to be evaluated for both community-acquired and opportunistic infections. The community-based infectious disease specialist and the associated clinical microbiology laboratory medical technologist can expect to encounter growth of a variety of fungal organisms from specimens submitted.