Diagnostic haemoperfusion.

Haemoperfusion and standard blood culture techniques were compared in the recovery of pathogenic Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus strains circulating in the blood of rabbits with experimental bacteriaemia. On the average, diagnostic haemoperfusion gave positive isolations in 93.3%, blood cultures in 51.7%. This difference in favour of haemoperfusion tended to increase with the decreasing intensity of bacteriaemia. Clinically, haemoperfusion helped to establish correct diagnosis in a 46-year-old female patient with diabetic nephropathy and absceding staphylococcal pyelonephritis, whose blood and urine cultures were repeatedly negative. In this patient the authors succeeded in isolating the cause of septicaemia with the aid of the Czechoslovak haemoperfusion column Hemasorb 400 C. This study implies that diagnostic haemoperfusion used for the isolation of pathogens from blood is more reliable and less time-consuming than routine culture techniques.