COMPARATIVE TRIAL OF ANTIBIOTIC REMOVAL DEVICE AND CONVENTIONAL BLOOD CULTURE IN PEDIATRIC PATIENTS

Abstract

In patients with prior antimicrobial therapy recovery of microorganisms present in the blood is often delayed or prevented. Our clinical trial tested the usefulness of the Antibiotic Removal Device (ARD) in a pediatric population. Equal volumes of blood were inoculated in a sequentially randomized fashion into ARD and standard (STD) pediatric blood culture bottles. Each was independently processed and monitored by the early subculture technique. Clinical relevance of all isolates was independently determined by predefined criteria. Of a total of 966 cultures, 61 (6.3%) were positive.Although the ARD system may have been beneficial in the recovery of 3 Haemophilus influenzae strains susceptible to pretreatment antibiotics(*), there was no overall significant increase in bacterial isolation, and the recovery of S.pneumoniae from 6 patients (none on antibiotics) was actually significantly impaired.