|
Infectious disease is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in most developing countries. Bacterial infections is one of the most acute and life-threatening infections requiring meticulous diagnosis and treatment.(1,2) Culturing the blood to isolate the bacterial agents of septicaemia in any patients is one of the most important confirmatory procedures in our Laboratories3. Blood cultures should be done carefully before empirical antibiotics are administered to patients.
Bacterial killing is the ultimate goal in the use of antibiotics. To achieve this, the understanding of the causative agents of septicaemia must be known so that appropriate choice of antibiotics could be made. Hence, blood culture remains central to this quest for identifying bacterial causes of septicaemia4. Even though several other methods for detection of bacterial agents exist, centers in the developing countries and even several health centers in the developed nations, depend heavily on the isolation of bacterial agents through blood cultures. However, due to poor laboratory techniques, poor laboratory conditions, underdeveloped human skills, the wide-spread abuse of antibiotics that were not prescribed by qualified physicians, the rate of growth of bacterial agents rarely exceed 40-50% growth yield in most laboratories5. Where the bacterial growth rate in blood cultures is remarkably low then the resources invested in such laboratory and its outcomes need evaluations. Such evaluation will help determine if the outcome results justify the input investment and this will guide health planners either to invest more resources that may lead to an exponential output that we dearly need in the developing countries. We therefore, conducted an audit and evaluated the blood culture growth yield of our microbiology laboratory with a view to assessing its efficiency for future improvement.
READ FULL ARTICLE
|