Clinical Performance of BD Kiestra InoqulA Automated System in a Chinese Tertiary Hospital

Abstract

Background

The aim of this study was to evaluate the clinical performance of the BD Kiestra InoqulA automated specimen processing system with commonly encountered clinical microbiology specimens.

Materials and Methods

Four types of clinical specimens (sputum, urine, normally sterile body fluids, and feces) were inoculated onto relevant agar plates using a manual method and the BD Kiestra automated system. The number of isolated pathogen species, number of isolated single colonies and uniformity of plate streaking were calculated and compared between two methods.

Results

Significantly more isolated colonies were observed on plates inoculated by InoqulA for all specimen types and media with the exception of sputum specimens inoculated onto chocolate agar with vancomycin (P =0.076) and urine onto China blue agar (P =0.856). The quality of plate streaking was also better with InoqulA for all specimen types and media with the exception of urine specimens (P =1.000) and sterile body fluids (P =0.56) inoculated onto China blue agar.

Conclusion

This is the first evaluation study of InoqulA with 4 types of clinical specimens in China. It focused on the effect of streaking plates automatically with the magnetic bead. Inoculation of clinical specimens with the BD Kiestra InoqulA system is superior to the manual method for recovery of single colonies and the overall quality of semi-quantitative plate streaking.

Keywords:

• BD Kiestra
• InoqulA
• microbiology automation

Ethics and Consent Statement

This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Peking Medical College Hospital ethics committee with written informed consent from all subjects. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The protocol was approved by Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Peking Medical College Hospital ethics committee (Approval no. S-K588).

Author Contributions

All authors contributed to data analysis, drafting or revising the article, gave final approval of the version to be published, and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Disclosure

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.