Saving Time in Blood Culture Diagnostics: a Prospective Evaluation of the Qvella FAST-PBC Prep Application on the Fast System

Time to results for identification (ID) and antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) from blood cultures is an important factor impacting outcome in sepsis. In this study we evaluated a novel device, the FAST (TM) system from Qvella that concentrates microbial biomass from positive blood culture flasks with the FAST-PBC Prep (TM) cartridge thereby producing a liquid colony (TM) (LC), which can be used immediately in standard laboratory downstream applications. We tested 250 positive blood culture bottles collected from January 2021 to May 2021. Results were obtained either with LC or from bacterial overnight cultures using Bruker's MALDI Biotyper (TM) and bioMerieux's Vitek 2. We compared ID and AST results obtained by both methods and evaluated turnaround times. Two-hundred and fourteen blood cultures could be included in the analysis. In 94% of the cases (n = 201) identification was obtained directly from the LC with concordant results compared to the standard workflow. No discordant results were observed. AST results could be analyzed for 175 samples. Using categorical analysis, concordant agreement was 97.4% of 1,676 AST results for Gram positive bacteria. Agreement for Gram negative bacteria was 985% of 980 AST results. Times-to-result were 36.9 h versus 12.8 h for ID and 52.9 h versus 26.8 h for AST in routine workflow vs FAST (TM) system, respectively. The FAST (TM) system gives reliable results for ID and AST directly from positive blood cultures and allows for significant time savings in blood culture diagnostics.