Blood Culture

Introduction.

Presentation on Blood Culture including principles in Blood culture, Types of Blood culture, processing methods, and quality control. 

Blood culture is a laboratory test that involves collection of blood using sterile equipment and technique, into a suitable culture medium, usually a broth, and its incubation prior to an appropriate microbiological examination. 

The goal of blood culture is to determine the presence or absence of microorganisms in the patient’s bloodstream. This is important because the proper diagnosis of blood stream infections and carrying out antimicrobial susceptibility testing directly correlates with appropriate intervention and patient survival. 

Indications

1. Where there are signs and symptoms suggestive of septicaemia or bacteraemia in a patient with a known or suspected local infection.

2. In the investigation of fever difficult to diagnose because of the absence of  signs of a specific infection or local infective lesion as in Pyrexia of unknown origin.

3, Antibiotic susceptibility testing.

Below is the full power-point presented by Dr. Gabriel Nsor of the Department of Medical Microbiology and Parasitology, University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, Calabar, Nigeria.