Typhoid fever poses a serious public health problem in Nigeria and is largely diagnosed based on the Widal agglutination test which has been proven to be neither sensitive nor specific. This study determined prevalence of typhoid using both blood culture automated microbiology systems (BD BACTEC). The was carried out among 90 patients attending Murtala Muhammad Specialist Hospital Kano. Out cas...

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...

In a collaborative study at three university hospitals, the recovery of microorganisms and the speed of detection of microbial growth by the BacT/Alert (Organon Teknika Corporation, Durham, N.C.) and BACTEC 660/730 (Becton-Dickinson Diagnostic Instrument Systems, Sparks, Md.) nonradiometric blood culture systems were compared. A total of 5,918 comparisons were made between BacT/Alert aerobic an...