Effect of Culture Technique on the Work Up in cirrhotic Patients with Spontaneous Bacterial Peritonitis

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Spontaneous bacterial peritonitis (SBP) is a serious complication in patients with advance liver cirrhosis and is associated with significant mortality. Multidrug resistance is an evolving problem in management of SBP. Therefore, early diagnosis and proper selection of antimicrobial therapy are warranted. Objective: Assessment of the accuracy of conventional culture compared to blood culture in diagnosis of SBP and evaluation the role of blood culture in selection of antimicrobial therapy for treatment of SBP. Methods: One hundred unselected consecutive cirrhotic patients with moderate or severe ascitis who were admitted to Internal Medicine Department during the period from October 2016 to April 2017 were included. Diagnostic aspiration of the ascetic fluid was made for each patient. The aspirated samples underwent chemical and cytological analysis as well as inoculation on conventional culture and on blood culture. Positive growths were tested for antibiotic sensitivity. Results: 47 patients (47%) among the 100 cirrhotic patients had spontaneous bacterial peritonitis. Positive growths were detected in 11 patients (23.4%) and in 32(68.1%) patients by using conventional culture and blood culture respectively. By using blood culture as gold stander, the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of conventional culture were 34.38%, 100%, 100% and 41.67% respectively. All isolated growths were sensitive to meropenem. Resistance to cefotaxime was detected in 20 cases (62.5%). Other tested drugs showed variable degrees of sensitivity. Conclusion: Conventional culture is of low sensitivity in diagnosis of SBP among cirrhotic patients and blood culture should be considered the gold standard for diagnosis of SBP. Multidrug resistance in SBP is common and antibiotic selection should be based on culture and sensitivity tests.