title: An evaluation of burn wound quantitative microbiology. I. Quantitative eschar cultures.
abstract: The reliability of quantitative data from burn wound biopsy cultures was investigated. This was done by comparing the recovery of microorganisms from a series of burn wound eschar biopsy specimens that were each divided into two approximately equal portions and cultured in parallel. The results indicate that a microorganism present in the burn wound site in any quantity has at least a 25% chance of being missed by a single quantitative eschar culture. For recovery levels corresponding to quantitative breakpoints that have been proposed to be predictive of burn wound sepsis, only 38% of paired quantitative results agreed within the same log10 unit, and 44% differed by +/- 2 log10 units or more. These findings indicate that quantitative results derived from burn wound biopsy cultures are unreliable and may be significantly misleading when used for decision-making relative to patient care.
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D001431:Bacteriological Techniques; D002056:Burns / Q000382:microbiology*; D006801:Humans; D014946:Wound Infection / Q000175:diagnosis