Use of simulated blood cultures for time to detection comparison between BacT/ALERT™ and BACTEC™ 9240 blood culture systems

In order to avoid the influence of pre-analytical steps, the following studs was performed by using sterile blood spiked with defined loads of microorganisms as inoculum. Time-to-Detection (TTD) was evaluated for the most frequently encountered bacteria and fungi in septicemia, comparing two commercially available blood culture systems. BACTEC(TM) 9240 (Becton Dickinson) and BacT/ALERT(TM) (Organon Teknika). A specific medium, Bactec Mycosis(TM) IC/F (Becton Dickinson), was compared with the Bactec Plus Aerobic (Becton Dickinson) and FAN Aerobic (Organon Teknika) media for recovery of fungi in general and in case of mixed bacterial/fungal septicemia. The results show that the BACTEC(TM) System detects nearly all enrolled microorganisms significantly faster than the BacT/ALERT(TM) the anaerobic vial contributes to the detection of anaerobes and facultative anaerobes and. in the case of BACTEC(TM), shortens TTD; the Bactec Mycosis(TM) IC/F bottle shot-tens TTD of fungi. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.