Article Text
Research Article
Comparative study of two systems for detecting becteraemia and septicaemia.
Abstract
Two blood culturing systems were compared in parallel-a semi-automated radiometric method, BACTEC1, and the conventional method used in our laboratory. BACTEC contains radioactive 14C labelled substrates and monitors the level of 14CO2 evolved by actively metabolizing bacteria. BACTEC was as efficient as the conventional method in detecting positive cultures and indicated that it was superior in detecting positive cultures earlier than the conventional system.