Results and costs of the first six months experience with BACTEC NR-730 were compared with a series of blood cultures performed by the conventional method previously used. The newer technology detected the growth of 14.1% of significant isolates on the day of receipt of the specimens. The previous method lacked blind subcultures on the day of receipt and therefore detected growth only after ove...

Introduction of PCR to directly detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis in clinical specimens has shown promise; however, interfering substances in clinical material have contributed to lowered assay sensitivities. We evaluated the ability of a PCR assay to detect M. tuberculosis in BACTEC 12B broth cultures. Clinical specimens were processed and inoculated into BACTEC 12B vials. Evaluation was appro...

An American Type Culture Collection reference strain and eight clinical strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, all of which were susceptible to isoniazid (INH) (mean MIC, 0.06 mg/liter) and negative for the Ser315Thr katG mutation, were left in their BACTEC 12B vials (for use with the BACTEC 460-TB method) containing 0.1 mg of INH per liter for periods of up to 28 days after the completion of t...

The efficiency of the 10-ml Isolator (E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Inc.) for recovery of pathogens from blood was compared with that of BACTEC 6B and 7C media (Johnston Laboratories) by using 4,195 cultures from 1,662 patients. During the first phase of the study, BACTEC bottles were inoculated with 3 ml of blood; in the second phase, bottles were inoculated with 5 ml. The objectives were to...

This study evaluated the necessity and the contribution of solid media when used in conjunction with radiometric Middlebrook 7H12 (BACTEC 12B; Becton Dickinson, Towson, Md.) medium for recovery and complete identification of mycobacteria. Each of 1,184 digested, decontaminated respiratory specimens was inoculated into one BACTEC 12B vial, one 7H11 plate, and two Lowenstein-Jensen (LJ) slants. W...

The BACTEC 460 radiometric mycobacterial broth culture system has consistently demonstrated faster and increased recovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from respiratory specimens of patients with pulmonary tuberculosis than conventional culture methods. We thus questioned whether three sputa were still necessary to definitively diagnose pulmonary tuberculosis if the BACTEC radiometric culture s...

BACKGROUND Antimicrobial removal devices in blood culture media are designed to remove antibiotics from the blood culture solution, thereby facilitating bacterial growth. How well these devices function clinically has not been established. METHODS All blood drawn for culture from adult inpatients and emergency department visitors in a level I trauma center was placed in paired BACTEC Plus and...