Other than the blood culture test is it suitable to do test for blood agar test for identification of blood infection?
What about the test for Procalcitonin or C-reactive protein test. Will this test confirm the infection in blood.?
performing blood culture and detecting bacterial growth this proves bacterial infection. But other tests can be done to confirm more. first, after doing the culture, bacterial colony count must be performed. If the count is high enough to say that this a blood infection then other tests can be done.
C-reactive protein test can confirm infection as this protein is released in cases of inflammation and infections. Other tests can also be done like: gram staining to identify bacterial species, also WBC Count which gives a great indication of sepsis or blood infection.
You can perform blood culture, then sub culturing to confirm the classification of your infecting bacteria. then, perform some test like CRP , CBC ( complete blood count ) , some other biochemical tests to correlate your blood culture result and stamp your diagnosis.
Best Regards,
Babu
you can't replace hemoculture with a direct peripheral blood inoculation in a plate. The hemoculture has the function of enriching the bacterial charge that may be present and the subsequent step into the plate allows bacterial identification. The increase in the C-reactive protein indicates a general inflammatory state. Pro-calcitonin correlates with sepsis but not give etiological information
Determining whether a patient has a microbial infection is a common clinical challenge. Sepsis is a case in point where clinical signs may be confused with causes other than infection, such as trauma. In this issue of EBioMedicine, Cartwright et al. describe a rapid blood test to discriminate between patients with microbial infections and those with sterile trauma . This is a ground-breaking and much-needed development.
Article Detection of Pathogens in Blood for Diagnosis of Sepsis and Beyond
Cartwright M. A broad-spectrum infection diagnostic that detects pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) in whole blood. EBioMedicine. 2016 ( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352396416302584) [PubMed] [Google Scholar]