[Method for obtaining blood culture while diagnosing bloodstream infection.]

Area of Science:

• Medical Microbiology
• Infectious Diseases
• Diagnostic Microbiology

Background:

• Bloodstream infections (BSI) require timely diagnosis for effective patient management.
• Traditional blood cultures often necessitate large blood volumes (40ml) and extended incubation periods.
• Molecular methods can accelerate pathogen identification but do not replace blood culture.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate a novel patent method for direct buffy-coat inoculation for bloodstream infection diagnosis in outpatients.
• To assess the feasibility of using a small blood volume (4.5ml) with MALDI-ToF for rapid pathogen identification.
• To compare the diagnostic yield and turnaround time of this method against traditional blood cultures.

Main Methods:

• Direct inoculation of buffy-coat from 4.5ml venous blood samples.
• Utilized MALDI-ToF mass spectrometry for rapid microbial identification.
• Culturomics approach combining various isolation conditions with genetic identification.

Main Results:

• 183 blood cultures were obtained from 382 outpatients (48.0% yield).
• Predominant pathogens included Gram-positive cocci (51.4%) and aerobes (73.4%).
• The method achieved pathogen identification within two days, enabling genetic analysis.

Conclusions:

• Direct buffy-coat inoculation with MALDI-ToF offers a rapid and efficient method for diagnosing bloodstream infections in outpatients.
• This approach significantly reduces the time to pathogen identification compared to conventional blood cultures.
• The method is particularly beneficial for identifying polymicrobial infections and guiding timely therapeutic interventions.