Clinical comparison of two commercial blood culture systems

A prospective, volume-controlled comparison of the BacT/Alert FAN (Organon Teknika, USA) and Vital (bioMerieux, France) blood culture systems was perf ormed ill a university hospital during a period of 11 months. Twenty to 40 mi of blood drawn from an adult patient was distributed equally between a B acT/ Alert FAN and a Vital blood culture set, both consisting of an aerobic and an anaerobic bottle. Bottles were weighed prior to use and after incub ation to calculate the blood volume. A compliant pair of aerobic, or anaero bic, bottles of a blood culture was defined as follows: blood volumes were 4-11 mi and the blood volumes in the two bottles differed by less than or e qual to 20%. From 120 compliant pairs of aerobic bottles, 135 organisms wer e recovered, of which 78 were isolated in both bottles, 44 in the BacT/Aler t FAN bottle only and 13 in the Vital bottle only (P < 0,0005). In particul ar, aerobic BacT/Alert FAN bottles yielded more members of the family Enter obacteriaceae (P<0.01). The BacT/Alert FAN system also performed significan tly better when comparing anaerobic bottles, and the yield was greater duri ng septic episodes. Both culture systems were similar regarding detection t ime, recovery during antimicrobial therapy, and the occurrence of false-pos itive and false-negative bottles. The overall performance of the BacT/Alert FAN system was better than that of the Vital system.