title: Comparison of surface swab and quantitative biopsy cultures dependent on isolated microorganisms from burn wounds.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Infections are one of the most important and potentially serious complications of burn wounds. Quantitative biopsy cultures are useful for showing that a burn wound infection is not present, but these cultures are not useful for showing that an infection is present. Swab cultures are used to diagnosis surface colonization and may not accurately reflect the organism(s) causing the wound infection.
  
  
  METHODS
  To perform a comparison of surface swab and biopsy cultures for isolated microorganisms from burn wounds, 160 biopsy/surface swab pairs were collected from 160 patients.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Seventy-seven patients (48.1%) showed positive micro-organism cultures from the burn wounds; 19.3 percent had both positive surface cultures and significant bacterial counts from the biopsy cultures, whereas 28.8 percent of the patients had only positive surface cultures. There was moderate agreement (41%) between the results of surface swab and quantitative biopsy cultures used to diagnose burn wound infections. Pseudomonas aeruginosa (45.5%) was the most predominantly isolated bacteria from the wounds, and there was good concordance between the results of the surface swab and quantitative biopsy culture samples (78%). Coagulase-negative Staphylococci (CNS) and Escherichia coli strains were only isolated from the surface swab samples because they are colonizing bacteria. The univariate analysis revealed that there were significant associations between the results of the positive biopsy cultures and the total surface body area, open flame burns, prolonged hospitalization and female gender (p<0.05).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Surface swab and quantitative biopsy cultures have a high rate of concordance in predicting P. aeruginosa invasion and the colonization of E. coli and CNS strains in burn wounds.
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Clinical Microbiology Erzurum State Research and Training Hospital, Erzurum, Turkey.
authors.forename: Mete Koray
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Vural
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Clinical Microbiology, Ataturk University, School of Medicine, Erzurum, Turkey.
authors.forename: Ulku
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Altoparlak
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology, Ataturk University, School of Veterinary, Erzurum, Turkey.
authors.forename: Demet
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Celebi
authors.affiliation: Department of General Surgery, Burn Unit, Ataturk University, School of Medicine, Erzurum, Turkey.
authors.forename: Mufide Nuran
authors.initials: MN
authors.lastname: Akcay
keywords: Burn wound; Quantitative biopsy culture; Surface swab culture