DETECTION KINETICS FOR POSITIVE BLOOD CULTURE BOTTLES BY USING THE VITAL AUTOMATED-SYSTEM

The VITAL system principle is based on homogeneous fluorescence techno logy, During an Ii-month period, a total of 19,706 blood cultures from adult patients hospitalized in various establishments of the Montpell ier Teaching Hospital were collected in VITAL bottles, of which 1,939 were declared positive, Only 204 bottles (1.04%) were false positives, The 1,735 true-positive bottles were collected from 130 patients, The final visual control permitted the detection of 10 falsely negative b ottles (0.05%), of which 5 contained clinically significant microorgan isms from four patients, The kinetics of detection for all microorgani sms showed that 66.6% were detected within 24 h, 83.1% within 48 h, 95 .5% within 120 h, and 100% within 150 h, No clinical episode would hav e been missed had a 5-day protocol been used instead of a 7-day protoc ol, Among the positive bottles, 65.7% were detected by the SLOPE algor ithm, 20.1% by the DELTA algorithm, and 14.2% by the THRESHOLD algorit hm, This retrospective study of our results shows that a 5-day protoco l is sufficient for the detection of septic episodes using the VITAL s ystem.