Rapid diagnosis of bacteria and determination of sensitivity in blood culture

Abstract

Aim: In patients with bloodstream infection; identifying the causative agent in a short time and applying appropriate antimicrobial therapy is very important in terms of reducing morbidity and mortality. In this study, it was aimed to evaluate a new method developed for direct identification and antibiotic susceptibility testing from blood culture. Materials and Methods: Bacterial pellet was obtained from blood culture samples that showed positive signals in the BacT/Alert 3D system by washing and centrifugation. Identification was made from this pellet using Vitek MS, followed by direct antibiotic susceptibility testing in the VITEK 2 automated system. The results were compared with the standard method. Results: Identification was performed on 80 blood culture samples. In the direct identification process, 73 samples were identified, of which 72 (90%) resulted in agreement with the standard method. Direct antibiotic susceptibility tests were found to be compatible with a rate of 97.9%. Among the evaluated 635 antibiotic susceptibility results; it was observed that 10 of them had major errors and 3 of them had minor errors. Conclusions: Using the procedures applied in the study from blood culture samples, without the need for costly reagents or long processing time, it has been observed that identification and antibiotic susceptibility results can be obtained within 24 hours, similar to standard results.