Printculture of Surgical Pathology and Autopsy Specimens

Printculture is a method of microbiologic assessment previously described for use in the autopsy setting. We sought to compare printculture of surgical and autopsy pathology specimens to standard microbiology culture using matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time of flight (MALDI-TOF)-based colony identification.

Printculture was performed on 18 frozen samples with corresponding standard culture results. The results of MALDI-TOF identification of colonies recovered by printculture were compared with standard cultures, and percent concordance was calculated.

There was 95.8% concordance to standard culture methods for cases with infections and 100% concordance for cases without infection. The pattern of growth was found to aid in the distinction between contamination and true infection.

Printculture allows the identification of microorganisms from routinely frozen tissues and provides a bridge between microbiology and histomorphology through the identification of associated histologic features of infection. This technique can be successfully integrated into autopsy and surgical pathology workup of potentially infected tissues.