Ocular Microbiology and Immunology Group
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2013 OMIG Abstract 4

BACTEC™ versus Conventional Culture for Diagnosis of Endophthalmitis
M Joag^1,2, N Nayak¹, G Satpathy¹, S Prasad¹, A Galor^2,3, CL Karp², P Venkatesh^1
1Dr. Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences, AIIMS, New Delhi, India;
²Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, University of Miami, Miami, FL;
³Miami Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Miami, FL

Purpose: The BACTEC (Becton Dickinson Diagnostic Instrument Systems, Towson, Maryland, USA) blood culture system is a fully automated microbiology growth and detection system designed to detect microbial growth from blood specimens. The purpose of this study was to determine detection and identification of organisms causing endophthalmitis using BACTEC system and to compare this with conventional culture
systems, and to determine the utility of BACTEC as an investigative tool in the microbiological diagnosis of endophthalmitis.

Methods: This Comparative cross sectional study was conducted in a tertiary ophthalmology institute in India over a period of 2 years. Vitreous samples from 30 cases of clinically suspected post traumatic or post surgical endophthalmitis were collected by vitreous aspiration or during vitrectomy. These samples were evaluated using both BACTEC Peds Plus/F Broth™ and conventional culture methods. The results were compared and analyzed by McNemar’s test.

Results: Thirty cases of post traumatic (n=13) and post surgical endophthalmitis (n=17) were included in the study. The mean age of the patients in the study was 39.48 (± 24.80) years. Four samples were positive with both systems and had 100% concordance of infective species. An additional 6 samples were positive with only the BACTEC system. The most common organisms isolated by BACTEC were Pseudomonas (n=3/10)
and Staphylococcus species (n=3/10). Positivity rates in the BACTEC cohort were higher in specimens acquired via vitrectomy (33.33%) than those obtained by needle aspiration (9.09%). Positivity is higher in those who did not receive prior intravitreal antibiotic administration (38.46% v/s 7.69%).

Conclusions: In this pilot study, BACTEC was able to detect culture positivity where traditional culture techniques failed. Further study is indicated to evaluate the utility of this system for ocular infections.

Disclosure: N

2013 Agenda and Abstracts | < Previous | Next >