RAPID SLIDE CULTURE: A USEFUL TOOL IN EARLY DETECTION OF MYCOBACTERIA

Background: Worldwide prevalence of tuberculosis is greater than 40 million and about 10 million new cases are added per year. The conventional culture method using L.J. medium is highly sensitive, however it is very time consuming. Materials and Methods: Hence a comparison of the above was done with rapid slide culture (RSC) method, which is simple, safe and rapid as it gives results within 7 days. 189 new cases of suspected pulmonary tuberculosis of which 99 were smear positive and 90 were smear negative for acid fast bacilli were included in this study. All the 189 samples were processed for culture by both RSC and LJ method. Results: It was found that sensitivity of RSC was 100% in smear positive cases but 81.3% in smear negative cases when compared with the growth on LJ medium which is still considered a gold standard in diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis. This indicates that less number of bacilli in the sample was a major factor affecting the sensitivity of this rapid method. Conclusion: We conclude that RSC although not an alternative for conventional LJ culture, could be a useful tool to detect and confirm clinically suspected cases, and since it gives results within 7 days, it hastens the diagnosis thereby helping in the treatment of the same.