In a comparative fungal blood culture study, a lysis-centrifugation system (Isolator; Du Pont Co., Wilmington, Del.) detected 89% of all episodes of fungemia; the lysis-centrifugation system detected fungemia exclusively or significantly earlier than did a biphasic brain heart infusion bottle system 83% of the time. The lysis-centriguation system was particularly useful in the early detection o...

Streptococci in patients who received previous antibiotic treatment and infection of the right heart and specifically on pace makers. The diagnostic strategy of BCNIE starts by serological testing of fastidious agents. At the minimum Coxiella burnetii and Bartonella should be tested. A single serum is sufficient, as endocarditis is a chronic disease associated with high level IgG antibodies. Q ...

Blood culture contamination represents an ongoing source of frustration for clinicians and microbiologists alike. Ambiguous culture results often lead to diagnostic uncertainty in clinical management and are associated with increased health care costs due to unnecessary treatment and testing. A variety of strategies have been investigated and employed to decrease contamination rates. In additio...

Prior antibiotic use, contamination, limited blood volume, and processing delays reduce yield of blood cultures for detection of Streptococcus pneumoniae. We performed immunochromatographic testing (ICT) on broth from incubated blood culture bottles and real-time lytA polymerase chain reaction (PCR) on broth and whole blood and compared findings to blood culture in patients with suspected bacte...

OBJECTIVE To describe the use of bacterial DNA amplification of conserved bacterial 16S ribosomal DNA nucleotide sequences by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to detect the presence of septicemia in critically ill septic patients. DESIGN Case series of blood samples from septic patients comparing the PCR results with conventional blood culture results. SETTING A general intensive care unit i...

Fifty eight patients undergoing dental extraction each had 45 ml blood collected. This was divided into 30 ml and 15 ml blood samples for culture. The 30 ml sample was inoculated into 120 ml nutrient broth with 0.05% liquoid and the 15 ml sample into 60 ml of identical broth so that the final dilution of blood in broth was always 1/5. Bacteraemia due to viridans streptococci was found in 27 and...

The volume of blood sampled for blood culture determines its sensitivity. We measured low mean blood volumes in submitted aerobic (8.38 ± 3.88 ml) and anaerobic (7.16 ± 3.83 ml) blood culture bottles. Educational seminars were held for phlebotomy teams, and renewed measurements thereafter revealed significantly higher blood volumes in submitted aerobic (9.77 ± 4.42 ml) and anaerobic (8.30 ± 3.6...

BACKGROUND Performing multiple blood culture sets simultaneously is a standard blood culture methodology, although it is often difficult to distinguish true bacteremia from contamination when only one of several blood culture sets is positive. This study clarified the relationship between the number of positive blood culture sets and clinical significance in patients with positive blood culture...

Introduction: Early diagnosis of bacteremia and its complications is the most important part of the care and management of the children. The utility of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques has been shown to identify pathogens in less and more optimal time. The aim of our study was to evaluate the importance and prevalence of occult bacteremia using universal PCR of blood in 3-36 month chi...