Improving the inpatient diagnostic management to reduce hospitalization time, diagnostic analysis requests and therapeutic treatments

The rapid analysis of human biological liquids is decisive to the inpatient for whom the timely correct diagnosis and the beginning of an adequate therapy in most cases represent the only way to survive.
In addition to community acquired infections, hospital acquired infections have a high Public Health impact by increasing morbidity and mortality rates and costs through prolonged hospital stays and additional diagnostic and treatment costs.

LIGHT SCATTERING TECHNOLOGY APPLIED TO BACTERIAL CULTURE

1. Sidecar, Alfred 60AST and HB&L are the first automated systems for the rapid urine culture with high sensitivity and specificity (2,3).
2. Using the patented technology based on light scattering they are able to monitor the intense bacteria replication activity from the inoculum step into specific culture broths providing real time growth curves.
3. Quantitative bacterial count results are reported in CFU/ml.
4. Due to the optimization of the broth it is possible to perform the bacterial culture in sterile and non sterile endocavitary samples such as respiratory fluids, cerebrospinal fluid and pleural fluid offering a sensitivity of 1 CFU/ml in 6 hours.
5. Enhanced liquid culture media combined with a specific supplement (DEB) has been developed to detect aerobic bacteria and exigent micro-organisms such as Haemophilus influenza, Neisseria meningitidis as well as samples characterized by extremely low bacterial counts.
6. Broths are in sterile vials with pierceable screw cap.
7. Samples are incubated at 37°C and constantly mixed avoiding sedimentation, flotation and growth anomalies typical of several micro-organisms.
8. Only live bacteria are detected while interference from non replicating substances such as erythrocytes, leucocytes, dead cells and salts present in the sample are eliminated during the initial zero reading.

PERFORMANCES IN DIFFERENT PUBLICATIONS

The results obtained by many studies conducted at in different reference centres demonstrate that Alifax systems offer “an excellent agreement with the cultural method [Petri dish] and a useful and precise count of the bacteria supplying undoubted advantages especially in those samples for which the bacteria amount represents a validation criteria”