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Multicenter Study
. 2017 Aug;55(8):2413-2421.
doi: 10.1128/JCM.00307-17. Epub 2017 May 24.

Multicenter Clinical Evaluation of BacT/Alert Virtuo Blood Culture System

Michael R Jacobs  1 , Tony Mazzulli  2   3 , Kevin C Hazen  4 , Caryn E Good  5 , Ayman M Abdelhamed  5 , Pauline Lo  3 , Bianche Shum  3 , Katharine P Roman  5 , Danielle C Robinson  4
Affiliations
Multicenter Study

Multicenter Clinical Evaluation of BacT/Alert Virtuo Blood Culture System

Michael R Jacobs et al. J Clin Microbiol. 2017 Aug.

Abstract

BacT/Alert Virtuo is an advanced, automated blood culture system incorporating improved automation and an enhanced detection algorithm to shorten time to detection. A multicenter study of the investigational Virtuo system (bioMérieux, Inc., Durham, NC) compared to BacT/Alert 3D (BTA3D) for detection of bacteremia/fungemia in four bottle types, SA and FA Plus (aerobic) and SN and FN Plus (anaerobic), was performed in a clinical setting with patient samples in a matched system design clinical trial. Blood was added to paired aerobic or anaerobic bottles, with the volume in each bottle in each pair required to be ≤10 ml and with the volumes required to be within 30% of each other. Of 5,709 bottle sets (52.5% aerobic pairs and 47.5% anaerobic pairs), 430 (7.5%) were positive for bacterial or fungal growth, with 342 (6.0%) clinically significant and 83 (1.5%) contaminated. A total of 3,539 sets (62.0%) were volume compliant, with 203 sets (5.7%) clinically significant. The positivity rates for volume-compliant bottle pairs determined by the two systems were comparable, with 68.7% of clinically significant isolates detected by both instruments, 15.7% by Virtuo only, and 15.7% by BTA3D only. Virtuo detected microbial growth nearly 2 h sooner overall than BTA3D (mean, 15.9 h versus 17.7 h). Shorter time to detection by Virtuo was related to organism group, with the time to detection being significantly shorter for enteric Gram-negative bacilli and enterococci (means, 3.6 h and 2.3 h shorter, respectively). This large clinical study demonstrated that the Virtuo blood culture system produced results comparable to those seen with the long-established BTA3D system, with significantly shorter time to detection.

Keywords: Virtuo; blood culture.

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