Effect of blood volume in standard anaerobic blood culture bottles of the BacT/ALERT 3D system used for the detection of pathogens and time to detection.

• Main Authors: Seong Chun Kim, Sunjoo Kim, Dong-Hyun Lee, Sae-Rom Choi, Jeong-Sook Kim
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2015-01-01
• Series: PLoS ONE
• Online Access: http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4315493?pdf=render

Blood volume may profoundly affect the isolation of microorganisms in blood cultures. The effect of blood volume in standard anaerobic bottles of the BacT/ALERT 3D system was investigated.Adult patients who visited the emergency department and referred for blood culture (n = 824) were enrolled from June to September 2013. Two sets of blood cultures were obtained from each patient. One set consisted of 5 mL that was collected in a standard aerobic bottle (SA5), 5 mL that was collected in a standard anaerobic bottle (SN5), and 10 mL that was collected in a standard anaerobic bottle (SN10). The growth of clinically significant pathogens and the time to detection (TTD) were compared between the SN5 and SN10 samples.Increasing the volume of blood collected from 5 to 10 mL yielded a 14.7% improvement in the isolation of microorganisms. There was a statistically significant difference in the isolation of pathogens (14 vs. 30, P = 0.023) between the SN5 and SN10 samples. Gram-positive microorganisms were detected earlier in the SN10 samples than the SN5 samples (P = 0.052). The mean TTD of all pathogens was 13.5 h for the SN5 samples and 12.9 h for the SN10 samples (P = 0.099).Increased blood volume in the SN bottle yielded a significantly higher pathogen detection rate. However, there was no difference in the frequency of earlier detection or TTD between the SN5 and SN10 samples.