CLINICAL COMPARISON OF THE BACTEC-9000 STANDARD ANAEROBIC F AND LYTIC/F BLOOD CULTURE MEDIA/

An 8-month prospective, volume controlled, comparison of Standard Anae robic/F media with a new anaerobic high blood volume lytic medium (Lyt ic/F) was performed. A total of 2,092 compliant sets, consisting of an aerobic resin bottle or standard aerobic bottle, Standard Anaerobic/F , and Lytic/F bottle were evaluated. A total of 220 (10.6%) positive s pecimens were detected from the paired anaerobic bottles. These consis ted of 194 true positive and 26 false positive bottles. Of 207 total o rganisms isolated, 122 were considered clinically significant. A compa rison of significant organism recovery revealed 79 isolates in both an aerobic bottles, 7 isolates in the standard Anaerobic/F bottle only, a nd 36 isolates in the Lytic/F bottle only (p < 0.001). The Lytic/F bot tle detected significantly more Enterobacteriaceae (p < 0.005) and Str eptococci (p < 0.05). There were 24 false positive Standard Annerobic/ F bottles and 2 false positive Lytic/F bottles (p < 0.001). When both bottles were positive the Standard Anaerobic/F bottle was positive 12 hours earlier in 1 instance whereas the Lytic/F bottle teas positive 1 2 hours earlier in 8 instances. The mean time for detection in the Sta ndard Anaerobic/F bottle was 18.2 hours versus 13.2 hours for the Lyti c/F bottle. The new Lytic/F anaerobic blood culture media tons found t o be superior to Standard Anaerobic/F media for both total organism re covery and time to organism detection.