The use of blood culture bottles in endophthalmitis

Purpose: To study the use of blood culture bottles for culturing vitreous specimens in acute-onset postoperative infectious endophthalmitis cases. Methods: Forty-eight eyes of 48 patients with mean age of 66.4 +/- 14.7 years with postoperative endophthalmitis that occurred within 6 weeks after ocular surgery, presenting from June 2001 to January 2005, were retrospectively studied. Vitreous fluid specimens of these patients were cultured in blood culture bottles. The measured outcome is the yield of positive culture. Results: Vitreous specimens yielded positive in 34 of 48 (70.8%) eyes with blood culture bottles. The most common organism isolated was Staphylococcus epidermidis in 17.6% (6/34) of cases. Conclusion: The direct inoculation of vitreous specimens into the blood culture bottles is easy to perform, with a high yield positive rate (70.8%). It may be an alternative to conventional culture media for culturing vitreous specimen in infectious endophthalmitis especially in clinics or hospitals that are unable to have adequate microbiology laboratory facilities.