Bacterial Contamination Testing of Platelets in the Blood Bank of a Tertiary Care Hospital

DOI: 10.21276/sjams.2018.6.3.67 Abstract: Platelet Concentrates (PC) are routinely stored in a blood bank at 20-24 0 C in order to maintain their functional activity and viability. However this room temp storage also renders them more liable to bacterial growth. Prevalence of bacterial contamination of blood products worldwide is varied, attributed to lack of universal bacterial contamination screening practices. As a result septic reactions, also leading to occasional fatalities, continue to occur which are hard to overlook? This study was conducted on Random Donor Platelets (RDP) with an aim to evaluate and quantify the significance of bacterial contamination of RDP units.RDP units from 4000 consenting healthy voluntary blood donors formed our study pool. RDP samples were initially incubated aerobically at 37 0 C for upto 7 days in Bactec 9120 fully automated blood culture system. In case of positive growth, further sub-cultures were done on blood agar. The growth characteristic pattern & identification of the isolated organisms was evaluated. Of the 4000 random donors platelet samples tested, 03 samples were positive. Amongst the positive samples, two samples showed growth on day 2. The isolated organisms were Micrococci sp. & Diptheroid sp. The prevalence of confirmed bacterial contamination was low. Prevention of transfusion of contaminated products with routinely used bacterial screening by culture methods is questionable due to delay in detection & false negative results. Key word: Random Donor Platelet, Bacterial Contamination, Automated Culture System.