A rapid method for determining the sterility of frozen-reconstituted blood

A rapid, fast, and accurate method of determining bacterial contamination in blood units is needed to provide a safe unit of frozen-reconstituted blood which can be stored at 4 C after thawing for more than the 24 hours currently allowed by law. The Bactec instrument seems to provide this method. It detects most of the organisms which have been reported in contamineted blood, and does this in a short enough period of time that any organisms introduced into the blood unit during the sampling process will not grow sufficiently to contaminate the unit while the culturing process is going on.