Performance Analysis of Blood Culture by an Automated Blood Culture System at a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital in South India

This Prospective study analyses culture result of 134 blood culture samples received in microbiology laboratory during a five months period between October 2014 and February 2015. We have documented time required for the culture to become positive, time at which culture could be considered negative and the spectrum of isolated organismsms including their antimicrobial susceptibility patterns. The specimens were processed by using automated system BacT/Alert 3D/60. Microorganism’s identification was performed by routine conventional and automated identification system and antibiotic susceptibility testing was done by Kirby bauer disk diffusion method. The mean detection time for isolates was 14.5 +/- 5.7 hours. Among organisms isolated included were Gram positive bacteria, Gram negative bacteria and yeasts with 22 (16.4%), 14 (10.4%) and 19 (14.2%) respectively. All our cultures were positive within 34 hours.