Comparison of conventional broth blood culture technique and manual lysis centrifugation technique for detection of fungemia.

Fungemia is associated with high morbidity and mortality rates. Various techniques have been introduced to diagnose fungemia such as conventional broth culture medium, by blind or macroscopic subculture, vented and aerated biphasic culture medium, lysis Þ ltration agitated culture medium, radiometric and nonradiometric methods, lysis centrifugation method, etc..[1] Of these, lysis-centrifugation technique seems to be a reasonable alternative, which combines the dual advantage of an increased yield with a short detection time as compared to the conventional blood culture system.[2] Lysis centrifugation is commercially available as isolator system, it can also be done as manual technique[3] for which limited studies are available. The present study is aimed to evaluate manual lysis centrifugation technique for detection of fungemia.