In the clinical microbiology laboratory, blood is a critical diagnostic sample that, in the majority of cases is sterile (or is it?). However, when microbes gain access to and multiply in the bloodstream, it can result in life-threatening illness including sepsis. Mortality rates from bloodstream infection and sepsis range from 25% to 80%, killing millions of people annually. Blood cultures are a vital technology used in the microbiology laboratory to isolate and identify microbes and predict their response to antimicrobial therapy. The Dark Art of Blood Cultures, edited by Wm. Michael Dunne, Jr., and Carey-Ann D. Burnham, surveys the entire field of blood culture technology, providing valuable information about every phase of the process, from drawing samples to culture methods to processing positive cultures. The Dark Art of Blood Cultures is organized around several major topics. History of blood culture methods. Details the timeline of blood culture methods from manual through automated and describes the technological development of the leading automated blood culture systems (Bactec, BacT/Alert, and VersaTREK). Manual and automated blood culture methods. Critiques manual and automated methods for setting up blood cultures for adult and pediatric patients. Detection of pathogens directly from blood specimens. Describes currently available CE marked and FDA-cleared commercial tests using both phenotypic and genotypic markers, including their strengths and limitations. The workflow of culturing blood. Includes best practices from specimen collection to culture system verification, processing positive cultures for microbe identification and antibiotic susceptibility determination, along with the epidemiology of positive blood cultures and the value of postmortem blood cultures. Microorganisms in the blood. Examines the concept of a blood microbiome in healthy and diseased individuals. The Dark Art of Blood Cultures is a resource that clinicians, laboratorians, lab directors, and hospital administrators will find engaging and extremely useful.

Offering a cultural history of blood as it was mobilized across twentieth-century U.S. medicine, militarisms, and popular culture, Hannabach examines the ways that blood has saturated the cultural imaginary.

Offering a cultural history of blood as it was mobilized across twentieth-century U.S. medicine, militarisms, and popular culture, Hannabach examines the ways that blood has saturated the cultural imaginary. In the clinical microbiology laboratory, blood is a critical diagnostic sample that, in the majority of cases is sterile (or is it?). However, when microbes gain access to and multiply in the bloodstream, it can result in life-threatening illness including sepsis. Mortality rates from bloodstream infection and sepsis range from 25% to 80%, killing millions of people annually. Blood cultures are a vital technology used in the microbiology laboratory to isolate and identify microbes and predict their response to antimicrobial therapy. History of blood culture methods. Details the timeline of blood culture methods from manual through automated and describes the technological development of the leading automated blood culture systems (Bactec, BacT/Alert, and VersaTREK). Manual and automated blood culture methods. Critiques manual and automated methods for setting up blood cultures for adult and pediatric patients. Detection of pathogens directly from blood specimens. Describes currently available CE marked and FDA-cleared commercial tests using both phenotypic and genotypic markers, including their strengths and limitations. The workflow of culturing blood. Includes best practices from specimen collection to culture system verification, processing positive cultures for microbe identification and antibiotic susceptibility determination, along with the epidemiology of positive blood cultures and the value of postmortem blood cultures. Microorganisms in the blood. Examines the concept of a blood microbiome in healthy and diseased individuals.

Blood culture provides an undeniable ideal aid in the diagnosis of neonatal infection, its result is reliable. The aim of our work was to evaluate the bacteriological profile of bacteraemias, newborns admitted from the hospital maternity IBN TOFAIL.A retrospective study on the cases of newborns hospitalized in the neonatal care unit, Mohamed VI University Hospital, Marrakech, originating from the delivery room of the IBN TOFAIL Gynecology and Obstetrics Department, during a period of 6 months From June to November 2016.125 blood cultures were collected, 43 were positive, representing an overall positivity rate of 34.4%. Positive blood cultures by coagulase-negative staphylococcal were 27. The other bacteremias were 16, represented by multiresistant germs, with the predominance of Klebsiella pneumoniae (5 cases), Acenitobacter Baumanii (4 cases) and Serratia marcescens in 3 cases.Bacteremia on admission; especially to multidrug-resistant germs, presents a major problem of therapeutic management. We insist on the need to improve the conditions of delivery in our context and to develop new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies.