Boas práticas de laboratório de micologia médica: elaboração de manual de procedimentos técnicos e de ilustrações fúngicas

Abstract

Fungi are responsible for several infectious processes, both community and nosocomial. Notably more critical in immunocompromised patients, fungal infections have been triggered by the progress of medical technology, which very often leads to a deepening of the consumptive states in hospitalized individuals or those who present important underlying processes. With opportunistic characteristics, these infections are resistant to the proposed treatments, as well as difficult diagnosis. The increase in cases of serious infections has had some interest in the medical mycology and patient management. The understanding of fungal aggression mechanisms, response to therapeutics, laboratory diagnosis and in vitro behavior towards drugs of clinical use have been the areas of greatest interest to the scientific community. Due to the morphological and biological complexity and the eco-epidemiology specificity of these organisms the study of pathogenic fungi still presents great limitations, which has kept these organisms largely unknown in the various medical specialties, particularly laboratory medicine. The most concrete reflection of all this low interest and limitation is the absence of the discipline of mycology, both undergraduate and postgraduate, in many medical and health courses. In addition, although more available, there is currently a shortage of literature on laboratory mycology in the portuguese language. The difficulty inherent to the mycological study and the lack of specialized human resources, training courses and didactic material, feed this system of ignorance and disinterest about pathogenic fungi. The verification of this reality led to the proposition, in the present work, of the preparation of a manual of good practices in a laboratory of medical mycology associated to an atlas of fungal images. This manual is a detailed description of topics such as biology and morphology of fungi of medical interest and medical mycology laboratory where are studies the macro and microscopic and physiological characteristics of fungi and their taxonomies, physical space, laboratory architecture, biosafety and environmental control, ergonomics, equipment, materials and methods of research and identification of fungi and quality control, as well as containing an cultural and tissue imaginographic atlas of the main fungal agents. Effectively, this manual consists of a bench technical guide or compendium. Thus, the manual elaborated represents an important tool for the laboratory assembly and the correct execution of the procedures in medical mycology, thus contributing to the diffusion of technical and mycological knowledge, formation of critical thinking and reduction of frequent diagnostic errors.