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Brief Report
Re-decontamination of liquid mycobacterial cultures: Additional Mycobacterium tuberculosis yield in the era of Xpert MTB/RIF Ultra in Cape Town, South Africa
African Journal of Laboratory Medicine | Vol 10, No 1 | a1529 |
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/ajlm.v10i1.1529
| © 2021 Dawood da Costa, Pieter Nel
| This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 15 January 2021 | Published: 10 December 2021
Submitted: 15 January 2021 | Published: 10 December 2021
About the author(s)
Dawood da Costa, Division of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, Department of Pathology, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa; and, National Health Laboratory Service, Tygerberg Hospital, Cape Town, South AfricaPieter Nel, Division of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, Department of Pathology, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa; and, National Health Laboratory Service, Tygerberg Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa
Abstract
A retrospective review of liquid mycobacterial cultures was performed at a laboratory in South Africa from 01 January 2018 to 31 December 2018 to assess the increased yield in detecting Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex following sample re-decontamination. Only 9 of 99 (9%) re-decontaminated samples were culture positive for M. tuberculosis complex. Xpert MTB/RIF Ultra, concurrently performed on 7 of the 9 samples, detected M. tuberculosis complex in all but 1 sample. Re-decontamination of non-sterile samples did not increase the M. tuberculosis complex yield enough to offset the financial costs and additional labour in a laboratory that utilises the Xpert MTB/RIF Ultra system as a first-line diagnostic modality.
Keywords
tuberculosis culture, liquid Mycobacterial Growth Indicator Tube culture, decontamination, re-decontamination, Xpert MTB/RIF Ultra
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