Medical Laboratory and Biomedical Science: Should anaerobes be cultured from superficial swabs?

Monday, August 12, 2013

Should anaerobes be cultured from superficial swabs?

Anaerobic culture has always been difficult in a diagnostic bacteriology laboratory. In the early days of bacteriology labs anaerobic culture was very difficult if not impossible, so it just wasn’t done.Then came along anaerobic jars and anaerobic cabinets where the oxygen could be removed from the environment surrounding the agar plate. This led to an “explosion” in anaerobic culture in many different types of samples.
Now the reality is starting to sink home… We are still not that good at recovering anaerobes. This is not particularly the laboratory’s fault. It is just very difficult to mimic the anaerobic conditions of certain parts of the body right from when the bacteria are taken from the patient until they are growing in an anaerobic environment in the laboratory.

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“Should anaerobes be cultured from superficial swabs?”