Clinical comparison of lysis-centrifugation and radiometric resin systems for blood culture.

The Isolator 10 lysis-centrifugation blood culture system (E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Inc., Wilmington, Del.) and the BACTEC 16B-17D radiometric resin system (Johnston Laboratories, Inc., Towson, Md.) both remove antimicrobial agents from the blood for culture. We compared these two systems for recovery of aerobic bacteria, facultatively anaerobic bacteria, and yeasts. A total of 5,000 blood cultures yielded 467 clinically significant isolates. Both systems recovered 350 (75%) organisms, 56 (12%) were detected by Isolator only, and 61 (13%) were detected by BACTEC resin bottles only. No group of organisms was isolated significantly more often from either system.