Blood
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The diagnosis of invasive aspergillosis (IA) in patients with hematologic disorders is not straightforward; lack of sensitive and specific noninvasive diagnostic tests remains a major obstacle for establishing a precise diagnosis. In a series of 362 consecutive high-risk treatment episodes that were stratified according to the probability of IA based on recently accepted case definition sets, the potential for diagnosis of serial screening for circulating galactomannan (GM), a major aspergillar cell wall constituent was validated. After incorporating postmortem findings to allow a more accurate final analysis, this approach proved to have a sensitivity of 89.7% and a specificity of 98.1%. ⋯ The excellent sensitivity and negative predictive value makes this approach suitable for clinical decision making. Unfortunately, given the species-specificity of the assay, some emerging non-Aspergillus mycoses were not detected. In conclusion, serial screening for GM, complemented by appropriate imaging techniques, is a sensitive and noninvasive tool for the early diagnosis of IA in high-risk adult hematology patients.