Deciphering Unexpected Vascular Locations of Scedosporium spp. and Lomentospora prolificans Fungal Infections, France.

Scedosporium spp. and Lomentospora prolificans are emerging non-Aspergillus filamentous fungi. The Scedosporiosis/lomentosporiosis Observational Study we previously conducted reported frequent fungal vascular involvement, including aortitis and peripheral arteritis.

Impact of EUCAST rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing (RAST) on management of Gram-negative bloodstream infection.

Objectives: During bloodstream infections, reducing the time to antimicrobial susceptibility testing is crucial to initiation of early appropriate antibiotic therapy. For Gram-negative infections, a phenotypic approach remains necessary. Rapid antimicrobial testing (RAST) is a recently developed phenotypic EUCAST method.

[Optimization of incubation duration of culture media in microbiology].

In order to perform biological analysis, clinical laboratories apply the instructions of reagent suppliers. For culture media these instructions are often incomplete and poorly adapted to the variety of clinical samples and micro-organisms. The REMIC can help to overcome these shortcomings.

[Contribution and evolution of blood culture quality indicators].

The monitoring of quality indicators, combined with a detailed risk analysis, validates the process of automated blood culture. Here we report the methodology of 5 years monitoring for 5 indicators at the Biology Department of Foch Hospital: volume sampled, proportion of contaminants, proportion of positive blood cultures in each instrument and drawer, epidemiological indicator and proportion of false-positive instrument signals. The results obtained were outside the expected target for the volume sampled and were acceptable for the other indicators.