Fungemia is a severe invasive fungal infection that combines rapid progression and a high mortality rate. This type of infection is a vital emergency, and early diagnosis is crucial. Currently, only the BD-BACTEC® Automated Blood Culture System (Becton Dickinson, New Jersey, USA) has a medium specifically dedicated to the detection of fungal agents: the BD-BACTEC®MycosisIC/F bottle.

Thus, it is important to assess the performance of the different bottles offered by the BD-BACTEC® Automated Blood Culture System for the diagnosis of fungemia.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of the BD-BACTEC® MycosisIC/F culture medium in comparison to bacteriologic culture bottle media for the detection of fungemia in different clinical situations.

This retrospective study was conducted over a period of 4 years at the Dijon University Hospital. Three hundred and thirty-one pairs of blood cultures (i.e. a BD-BACTEC® MycosisIC/F culture bottle associated with at least one bacteriologic culture media bottle) were included in this study.

We showed that the BD-BACTEC® MycosisIC/F culture bottles performed significantly better (i.e. diagnostic advantage either because it was the only positive bottle of the pair or time to positive result was shorter) than the bacteriological culture bottles in 57.7% (191/331) of cases (p <0.01). Multivariate analysis revealed that BD-BACTEC®MycosisIC/F bottles had better diagnostic performance than BD-BACTEC®Bacteriologic bottles in the context of: (i) the initial versus follow-up diagnostic subgroup, (ii) venipuncture or arterial sampling versus other sampling methods, and (iii) detection of filamentous versus yeast fungi.

We concluded that the use of BD-BACTEC® MycosisIC/F culture bottles is a relevant addition to media optimized for routine bacterial detection.