Instrument robustness of the Becton Dickinson (Sparks, MD) BACTEC™ and the bioMérieux (Durham, NC) BacT/Alert™ automated blood culture devices was assessed by interviewing 278 laboratory managers and senior lab technicians in 5 European countries over a period of less than one month. The main question was “When was the last time you had to call the company for a repair or technical problem (not including normal maintenance).” 101 or 36,3% of the interviewees reported at least one technical intervention since the year of installation of their device. Specific attention was paid to comparability of the test population for both systems. Based on these data it can be concluded that the BacT/Alert™ device requires significantly more interventions than the BD BACTEC™ device. Also the time since last call to the supplier for a technical intervention was significantly shorter for the BacT/Alert™ device than for the BACTEC™ device. When intervention was needed the BacT/Alert™ device was “completely down” just as much time as the BACTEC™ device. The most common problems with automated blood culture devices are hardware related. However, these problems have little impact on patient care because of the availability of back-up and data-retrieval systems.

Reprinted with Permission from BD.