title: Evaluation of routine anaerobic blood cultures in the BacT/Alert blood culture system.
abstract: To evaluate the use of routine anaerobic blood cultures with the BacT/Alert system, results of 12,289 blood culture sets collected from adults over a 9-month period were reviewed. Of the sets included in the study, 1,306 (10.6%) from 808 patients grew 1 or more organisms. Anaerobes were present in 39 sets from 38 patients. Of the positive sets, both bottles were positive in 60.7% of cases, the aerobic bottle only in 23.7%, and the anaerobic bottle only in 15.6%. When only the 254 patients who had 2 or more positive sets were considered, both bottles were positive in 71.5% of cases, the aerobic bottle only in 20.7%, and the anaerobic only in 7.8%. In this subset of patients gram-positive bacilli, gram-negative bacilli other than Enterobacteriaceae, and yeasts grew significantly more frequently in aerobic bottle. No organisms preferred the anaerobic bottle. These data support the selective use of the BacT/Alert anaerobic blood culture bottle in patients at risk for anaerobic bacteremia.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, USA.
authors.forename: E R
authors.initials: ER
authors.lastname: Bannister
authors.forename: G L
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: Woods
mesh_terms: D000693:Anaerobiosis; D001419:Bacteria / Q000302:isolation & purification; D001769:Blood / Q000382:microbiology*; D003470:Culture Media; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005658:Fungi / Q000302:isolation & purification; D006801:Humans; D008828:Microbiological Techniques
chemical_list: D003470:Culture Media