Post-mortem bacterial culture of bronchial mucus and heart blood in hospital and non-hospital autopsies: effect of morgue time and length of hospitalization.

We studied cultures of 109 bronchial mucus and 67 heart blood specimens from unselected hospital autopsies and 40 bronchial mucus and heart blood specimens from unselected non-hospital (forensic) autopsies, performed 1-11 days after death. The most prevalent bacterium was Streptococcus viridans. No association was found between morgue time and the number of species isolated from each bronchial mucus or heart blood specimen in either hospital or non-hospital autopsies, nor between morgue time and the number of occasions different species were isolated from the bronchial mucus or heart blood specimens in either series. Bronchial mucus and heart blood cultures from the hospital autopsies gave more often gram negative rods and less often other microbes in result than those from the non-hospital autopsies (p less than 0.05 and p less than 0.025 respectively). There was a highly significant association between the length of hospitalization and the occurrence of gram negative rods both in the bronchial mucus and heart blood (p less than 0.001 and p less than 0.0001 respectively), a result which probably reflects the ante-mortem colonization of the respiratory tract with gram negative bacilli among hospitalized patients.