Multicenter comparison of BACTEC 9050 and BACTEC 9240 blood culture systems

Area of Science:

• Microbiology
• Clinical Diagnostics
• Medical Technology

Background:

• Bloodstream infections require rapid and accurate pathogen detection.
• Automated blood culture systems are crucial for timely diagnosis.
• Comparing different automated systems aids in optimizing laboratory workflows.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare the performance of BACTEC 9050 and BACTEC 9240 blood culture systems.
• To evaluate organism recovery rates and time to detection for both aerobic and anaerobic cultures.
• To assess the incidence of false-positive and false-negative results between the two systems.

Main Methods:

• Multicenter evaluation of BACTEC 9050 and BACTEC 9240 systems.
• Processing of 4,383 aerobic (Plus Aerobic/F) and 2,431 anaerobic (Plus Anaerobic/F) blood culture sets.
• Statistical analysis of organism recovery, time to detection, and false result rates.

Main Results:

• No significant difference in overall organism recovery between systems, except for higher recovery of Streptococcus pneumoniae with BACTEC 9050.
• BACTEC 9240 showed significantly more false-positive signals in both aerobic and anaerobic cultures.
• Time to detection was similar, with BACTEC 9240 showing faster recovery of anaerobes.

Conclusions:

• Both BACTEC 9050 and 9240 systems are effective for blood cultures.
• BACTEC 9050 demonstrated an advantage in detecting Streptococcus pneumoniae.
• BACTEC 9240's higher false-positive rate, particularly for anaerobes, warrants consideration in system selection.