[Recovery of facultatives and anaerobes from frozen specimens with a polymicrobial nature]

Microbiological examination of frozen specimens is sometimes carried out in clinical microbiology and the result is used as an aid of diagnosis and/or treatment of polymicrobial infections. The study was carried out to reevaluate the merit of freezing specimens in clinical microbiology. A total of 10 specimens with a polymicrobial nature were included in this study. Before and after freezing specimens, we isolated facultative and anaerobic bacteria using a set of primary isolation media, consisting of three aerobic agar plates (MacConkey agar, blood agar and chocolate agar) and four pre-reduced anaerobic agar plates (HK Blood agar, HK blood agar with paromomycin (PM) and vancomycin (VM), phenyl ethyl-alcohol (PEA) agar and Bacteroides bile esculin (BBE) agar). All the procedures were done in a properly controlled anaerobic chamber. The number of isolates before and after freezing was 79 and 70, respectively. Among the strains isolated before freezing, 33 strains were recovered on the same kin of media artery freezing, without a remarkable decrease in the quantity. But 26 strains were not recovered and 2 strains were recovered with a remarkable decrease. Among 26 strains, 15 strains could be successfully backed up on the different kind of media. In conclusion, an anaerobic technique with an anaerobic chamber and a set of isolatin plates including blood agar, chocolate agar, HK blood agar, PEA blood agar, HK blood agar with PM and VM enable us to estimate the bacteriology before freezing from frozen specimens.