Improving the diagnosis of central nervous system infections: experience with the off-label use of FA-BCID2

We report our experience with the off-label use of the FilmArray Blood Culture Identification 2 (FA-BCID2) panel (bioMérieux) on cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), focusing on bacterial pathogens relevant to hospital-acquired (HA) CNS infections and late-onset neonatal meningitis (e.g., Klebsiella pneumoniae, Enterobacter cloacae complex, Acinetobacter baumannii complex, and coagulase-negative staphylococci) in contrast to FA-ME, which primarily targets community-acquired (CA) bacteria. Previous small studies on FA-BCID/BCID2 in CSF have reported promising performance.