Comparative Evaluation of Conventional and BACTEC Methods for Detection of Bacterial Infection

Infectious diseases are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in developing countries. The aim of this study was to compare the results of blood culture employing the conventional and BACTEC methods for detection of bacterial infection in Taleghani Hospital, Tehran.

This was a descriptive study carried out for 3 months (March 2014-May 2014) on 272 inpatients. Their blood culture results were analyzed using the two methods (BACTEC and conventional).The results were analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency, mean and standard deviation) and inferential tests (cross tab) via SPSS version 17 software.

The results of 177 cases (94.1%) out of 271 studied subjects were true positive, 11 (5.8%) were false negative, 2 cases (3.15%) were false positive, and 11 cases (6.48%) were true negative. The sensitivity and specificity of the BACTEC test were 84.6 and 94.1, respectively, and the rate of positive blood cultures employing BACTEC method was equal to 100% (22.22) while in the conventional method, positive results were equal to 59.09% (22.13).

Both BACTEC and conventional methods have high validity. In order to evaluate the results of blood culture and infection control, experts can use either of these methods to study the results of bacterial blood culture.