Clinical use of rifampicin during routine reporting of rifampicin susceptibilities: a lesson in selective reporting of antimicrobial susceptibility data.

Increased use of rifampicin for in-patients was noted after the laboratory began reporting rifampicin susceptibilities routinely for all Gram-positive bacterial isolates. The appropriateness of rifampicin use was evaluated by chart review for in-patients administered rifampicin during two time periods, before and during routine rifampicin susceptibility reporting, respectively. While rifampicin susceptibility was reported routinely, four patients were subjected to potentially harmful misuse of rifampicin.

Isolator component responsible for inhibition of Mycobacterium avium-M. intracellulare in BACTEC 12B medium.

We previously reported an inhibitory effect on Mycobacterium avium-M. intracellulare (MAI) when blood collected and processed with the Isolator system was placed in BACTEC 12B bottles for radiometric monitoring. We sought to identify the specific component(s) of the Isolator lysis-anticoagulant reagent (LAR) responsible for the inhibitory effect.

Performance of fungal blood cultures by using the Isolator collection system: is it cost-effective?

Enhanced recovery of fungal isolates from blood by using the Isolator system has been reported previously. We examined bacterial and fungal blood cultures during a 14-month period to determine if this enhanced recovery required a separate fungal culture and to determine the differential utility between a fungal blood culture and a routine bacterial culture. During this period, 84 of 5,196 (1.

An evaluation of the necessity of 24-hour incubation for oxacillin minimum inhibitory concentrations.

Current standards of the National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards (NCCLS) for microtube dilution recommend 24-hour incubation of staphylococci when testing for oxacillin/methicillin resistance. This study was conducted to quantify the need for this requirement. Standard 16-hour readings were compared with subsequent 24-hour readings of 515 fresh clinical isolates (256 Staphylococcus aureus, 259 coagulase-negative staphylococci) that were susceptible to oxacillin (microtube dilution minimum inhibitory concentration [MIC] < or equal to 2 micrograms/mL) after 16 hours.