yoram keness (rakeness at internet-zahav.net) wrote:
: Dear Colleagues!
:: I have come accross a practice of processing sputum specimen for
: Mycobacteria which I would like to share with you:
:: In preparing the Kinyoun stain, the technician was instructed to do two
: things:
: first to open the container with the sputum specimen and try to "fish" an
: especially big clump of puss and place it
: on a glass slide. Decontamination\ NALC treatment of
: remaining sputum followed, and after centrifugation another ca. 0.06 ml
: of the pellet were pipetted on top of the
: first (in the meantime dried out) spot.
:: As soon as this one was dry, Kinoun staining followed.
:: The argument has it, that doing it this way increases the sensitivity of
: the Kinyoun stain.
: Acid fast bacilli that might have been damaged through the decontamination
: process will be
: "compensated" for by the ones that remained intact in the pretreated
: specimen. Has this ever been
: proven for the NALC procedure?
:: This procedure (the "fishing") is exteremly messy and I wonder whether it
: does the job.
:: Can anyone comment on the effectiveness of this procedure? is it worthwile
: the mess and
: danger we are exposing the staff in sending them out "fishing"?
:: Thanx
:: Y. Keness
In my opinion, this is a waste of time and, possibly, risky. In
an appropriate centrifuge, the afb will be concentrated in the pellet
anyway, so why do the direct portion from the specimen?
--
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| Dennis D. Gaunt | Internet: dgaunt at uhl.uiowa.edu |
| The University of Iowa | Voice: (319) 335-4500 |
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