Multipathogen real-time PCR system adds benefit for my patients: no

Excerpt

Among the available strategies and recommendations to treat severe infections, namely bloodstream infections, prompt and adequate antibiotic therapy is among the ones with greatest impact on clinical outcomes [1]. “Classic” blood culture results take at least 48–72 h for bacterial culture, 4–24 h for identification, and an additional 24 h for antibiotic susceptibility testing to become available. Besides, blood cultures have suboptimal sensitivity for microorganisms that are phagocytized or that are only present in the infectious focus, and in patients who have already received antibiotics. As a result, new methods have been developed to shorten the identification time of the causative agent and whenever possible its sensitivity pattern. These new methods are based on antigen detection, antibody detection, and molecular detection, namely DNA amplification by real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). However, bacteremia is not equal to DNAemia, since RT-PCR technology can detect minute amounts of pathogen DNA in patient blood samples [2]. Besides, sepsis is not only a bloodstream infection, but SeptiFast (the first CE-marked RT-PCR) was developed for pathogen identification only in blood samples. …