Identification of Staphylococci by Polymerase Chain Reaction Directly from a Positive Blood Culture and Effect on...

As one of the most common bloodstream infections worldwide, Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia places a major burden on health care. Implementation of a rapid, genetic-based diagnostic test may have important implications in the clinical management of patients with S. aureus bacteremia.

The primary objective was to assess concordance between testing based on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and the current gold standard, culture and sensitivity testing; the secondary objective was to assess the impact of this technology on patient care.

A pre-post intervention retrospective chart review was used to document the hospital course of patients with a diagnosis of S. aureus bacteremia before and after implementation of the PCR-based diagnostic system. Laboratory results from all patient samples subjected to PCR-based analysis following implementation of this system were compared with culture and sensitivity data for the same samples to determine accuracy of the new system. In addition, time to optimal therapy for each patient was calculated as the interval between the initiation of empiric and terminal therapies. The appropriateness of antimicrobial treatment was characterized as guideline-concordant, nonconcordant with the guidelines, or nonconcordant yet still clinically appropriate.

In total, 98 and 99 patients met the inclusion criteria before and after implementation of the PCR-based diagnostic system, respectively. PCR-based results displayed 99.8% concordance (440/441 total samples) with results from culture and sensitivity testing. The time to optimal therapy was significantly shorter after implementation, by a mean of 22.8 h (p < 0.001). Overall, 97% of empiric and 99% of terminal antimicrobial regimens were either guideline-concordant or clinically appropriate for treatment of S. aureus bacteremia; 3% of empiric and 1% of terminal antimicrobial regimens were nonconcordant with clinical guidelines without any explanation based on other clinical considerations.

The study findings support the utility of using a direct-from-positive-blood-culture PCR-based diagnostic tool as the primary method of identifying S. aureus bacteremia in patients, as well as the acceptance of and acting upon the new assay's results by our local clinicians. PCR-based assays can help reduce the time to optimal terminal therapy for patients with bacteremia.