Laboratory Analysis of the ePlex® Blood Culture Panels for Timelier Diagnosis of Gram-Negative and Gram-Positive Bacteremia

Conventional microbiology for diagnosing bacteremia has been the mainstay, yet in the past decade, new technologies have emerged. Molecular biology is now an important tool in the microbiology laboratory to help provide organism and resistance-mechanism identifications quickly using rapid multiplex panels directly on positive blood cultures to deliver information to clinicians for timelier management of patients with bacteremia due to bacterial and fungal pathogens.

The microbiology laboratory can benefit from rapid sample-to-answer multiplex systems to streamline workflows at the blood culture bench and provide more rapid information to the clinical team managing patients. Members of the clinical team can utilize the faster identification of pathogens and antimicrobial resistance gene information delivered by the laboratory to properly provide care and therapeutic management for each specific patient quickly instead of waiting for traditional culture and antimicrobial susceptibility results, which can take more than 24-48 hours. Knowing the causative pathogen(s) and whether that pathogen does or does not harbor a resistance gene can allow for more effective antimicrobial therapy resulting in more favorable patient outcomes.

In this webinar, the audience will hear a Microbiology Laboratory Director and an Infectious Diseases Physician from a tertiary care facility describe their experience testing positive blood cultures from the clinical microbiology laboratory on the ePlex^® Blood Culture Identification Gram-Negative and Gram-Positive Panels. Results from the prospectively collected positive blood cultures were assessed against traditional microbiology methods for organism identification while retrospective clinical outcomes were assessed based on a more rapid result for identification of gram-negative and gram-positive pathogens and the presence of associated antimicrobial resistance genes.

Speakers

Sixto M. Leal Jr, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Director, Clinical Microbiology, Fungal Reference Laboratory, Department of Pathology Division of Laboratory Medicine, The University of Alabama at Birmingham

Dr. Leal has a broad background in microbiology, immunology, molecular biology and medicine with residency training in pathology and subspecialty fellowship training in medical microbiology. He received his MD/PhD training in the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at Case Western Reserve University, pathology residency training at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and Microbiology fellowship training at the Cleveland Clinic. He is certified by the American Board of Pathology in Clinical Pathology and Medical Microbiology and has a special clinical interest in medical mycology, parasitology, molecular diagnostics, infectious disease histopathology, and trainee education. He serves on the College of American Pathologists (CAP) Microbiology Resource Committee and Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) fungal diagnostics and antifungal subcommittee working groups.

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Todd McCarty, MD, Assistant Professor, Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program Director, University of Alabama at Birmingham

Dr. McCarty completed medical school, internal medicine residency training, and infectious diseases fellowship training at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is board certified in both internal medicine and infectious diseases. His interests span from medical education to clinical care of immunocompromised patients along with clinical trials and clinical research. In addition to being the fellowship program director for infectious diseases at UAB, he is also the co-director of antimicrobial stewardship at the Birmingham VA Medical Center and a member of the antimicrobial stewardship committee at UAB. He serves as the PI on multiple clinical trials evaluating new anti-fungal and anti-bacterial agents as well.

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