Kozlov A, et al. - Researchers aimed to characterize bacterial communities in intra-abdominal abscesses collected by percutaneous drainage using culture-independent 16S rRNA Illumina sequencing. In this work, a poor correlation was observed between the bacterial consortia identified by cultures and the microbial composition determined by 16S rRNA sequencing. In most cases, the cultured isolates were minority constituents of the overall abscess microbiome. Data thereby suggested that molecular-based approaches could assist in documenting the presence of bacteria in intra-abdominal abscesses where standard cultures were unrevealing, particularly in the setting of prior antibiotic exposure.