The present environment of cost containment frequently forces laboratories to reassess various strategies for the diagnostic work-up of patient specimens. The necessity for the performance of antimicrobial susceptibility testing on all morphologic variants of blood culture isolates was examined in this study. Over a 4-year period, of 143 such organisms that were identified, 56 (39%) exhibited clinically significant differences in antibiogram profiles. Coagulase-negative Staphylococcus represented the largest proportion of isolates (n = 115), 39% of which demonstrated clinically significant differences in antibiograms. The authors conclude that these results justify the current practice in their laboratory of performing separate antimicrobial susceptibility testing on all morphologic variants of isolates.

Anti-Bacterial Agents↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Acquisition of K:1-like antigen during terminal sepsis.

This report describes a patient whose own and transfused K:-1 red cell populations became strongly K:1 during a terminal episode of sepsis due to a group D streptococcus organism, Streptococcus faecium. Subsequent in vitro studies using normal K:-1 red cells inoculated with that organism showed that it could render the red cells agglutinable by reagents containing IgG anti-K1. In addition, disrupted S. faecium organisms rendered Jkb-negative red cells agglutinable by those reagents.

Antigens, Bacterial↗