Culturing periprosthetic tissue in BacT/Alert® Virtuo blood culture system leads to improved and faster detection of prosthetic joint infections

BACKGROUND: Blood culture bottles (BCBs) provide a semiautomated method for culturing periprosthetic tissue specimens. A study evaluating BCBs for culturing clinical samples other than body fluids is needed before implementation into clinical practice. Our objective was to evaluate use of the BacT/Alert® Virtuo blood culture system for culturing periprosthetic tissue specimens. METHODS: The study was performed through the analysis of spiked (n = 36) and clinical (n = 158) periprosthetic tissue samples. Clinical samples were analyzed by the BCB method and the results were compared to the conventional microbiological culture-based method for time to detection and microorganisms identified. RESULTS: The BacT/Alert® Virtuo blood culture system detected relevant bacteria for prosthetic joint infection in both spiked and clinical samples. The BCB method was found to be as sensitive (79%) as the conventional method (76%) (p = 0.844) during the analyses of clinical samples. The BCB method yielded positive results much faster than the conventional method: 89% against 27% detection within 24 h, respectively. The median detection time was 11.1 h for the BCB method (12 h and 11 h for the aerobic and the anaerobic BCBs, correspondingly). CONCLUSION: We recommend using the BacT/Alert® Virtuo blood culture system for analyzing prosthetic joint tissue, since this detect efficiently and more rapidly a wider range of bacteria than the conventional microbiological method. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12879-019-4206-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.