Performance Evaluation of an In-House Blood Culture Pretreatment Kit and MALDI-TOF Mass Spectrometry for Rapid Identification of Microorganisms.

BACKGROUND

The challenge in the use of MALDI-TOF MS for detection of microorganisms in culture-positive blood bottles is sample preparation. This study aimed to evaluate the accuracy of an in-house blood culture pretreatment kit coupled with MALDI-TOF MS system for directly identifying pathogens.

METHODS

A total of 114 blood samples were pre-enriched and identified using an in-house blood culture pretreatment kit and MALDI-TOF MS. The performance of the methods was compared to that of the conventional bacte-rial culture plus VITEK® 2 Compact.

RESULTS

The kit showed high identification rates for both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria, compared to that of conventional bacterial culture (p > 0.05). The identification rate of Gram-negative bacteria using the serum separator tube method was significantly higher than that of Gram-positive bacteria and yeasts (p < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

The kit can be used for the pretreatment of blood culture bottles, which can significantly shorten the identification and reporting times.