Controlled comparison of BacT/ALERT FAN aerobic medium and BACTEC fungal blood culture medium for detection of fungemia

Yeasts are an increasingly common cause of nosocomial bloodstream infection s, Methods for their detection are many; controlled comparisons are few. Th e vented FAN aerobic blood culture medium has been shown to be superior to the standard BacT/ALERT aerobic medium for the detection of fungemia as wel l as bacteremia. The BACTEC selective fungal medium (FM) (BD Biosciences, S parks, Md,) allowed detection of more episodes of fungemia than did a resin -containing medium with equal volumes of blood cultured, Therefore, we comp ared vented FAN to FM for the ability to recover fungi from the blood of pa tients who were at increased risk of having fungemia, From 5,109 cultures p rocessed for which both FAN and FM battles were adequately filled, fungi we re recovered from 87 cultures. Of these, 47 were detected with both bottles , 12 were detected with FAN only, and 28 were detected with FM only (P < 0. 05). FAN was the first bottle positive for 36 of the 47 cultures for which both bottles yielded the same fungus, whereas the FM bottle was the first b ottle positive for 11 cultures (P < 0.001), A total of 54 episodes of funge mia were identified, with 40 detected by both media, 4 detected only by FAN , and 10 detected only by FM (P value, not significant). We conclude that t he vented FAN aerobic bottle is comparable to the FM bottle for detection o f episodes of yeast infection but has the added benefit of detecting bacter ia.