Time to Positivity and Antibiotic Sensitivity of Neonatal Blood Cultures

Sepsis is a commonly encountered and potentially life-threatening problem in neonatal intensive care units, blood culture of neonatal sepsis helps in either optimizing treatment or terminating antibiotics.

We determined the causative agent, time to positivity (TTP), and antibiogram of neonatal blood cultures collected in a tertiary care center, to investigate difference between early- and late-onset neonatal sepsis and to establish the time at which a blood culture could safely be considered negative, using the BacT/ALERT^® 3D 60. A total of 826 clinically suspected neonates suffering from sepsis and admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit of a tertiary care hospital, Alexandria, Egypt were included in this study.

Eighty-five (10.29%) showed positive results. The overall TTP median was 21.1 h. Out of the 85 positive cultures, 57 (67.06%) were Gram-positive, 15 (17.65%) were Gram-negative, and 13 (15.29%) were fungi (all Candida). Coagulase-negative staphylococci were the predominant organism (41.18%). All the Gram-positive pathogenic isolates were sensitive to vancomycin and tigecycline. Among the Gram-negative isolates, maximum antibiotic sensitivity was observed for levofloxacin.

We conclude that more than 3 days of incubation may not be required when using the BacT/ALERT^® 3D 60 system.