Relevance of routine use of the anaerobic blood culture bottle

Using the BacT/Alert automated system, we conducted a 1-year retrospective study on blood cultures, focusing on the relevance of routine use of the anaerobic bottle. The rate of patients with positive blood cultures was 19.7%. Among these, 13.5% had a positive anaerobic bottle in the absence of any aerobic bottle, and 2/3 of these grew with nonobligate anaerobes. These patients were hospitalized in 20 out of 26 wards of the hospital group. For 65.4% of the monomicrobial-positive blood cultures growing Enterobacteriaceae, the anaerobic bottle detected growth earlier than the corresponding aerobic bottle. These data suggest that, in our institution, the use of an anaerobic bottle is still relevant.