Development in blood culture system to detect fungemia from past until now

Fungemia is one of the most important causes of mortality and morbidity in immunocompromised patients. Currently، blood culture is the gold standard method which used to detect the fungemia and identify the causative pathogen. Isolation of pathogens from blood is very important for doing antimicrobial susceptibility tests and prescribing the appropriate drugs. From the past until now، several new blood culture systems for detection of fungemia have been introduced. In the past decades، aerobic venting broth based media was the best way to isolate yeast from blood. After that، biphasic medium include enrich media such as brain heart infusion broth and agar used successfully to increase yield of yeast from blood. The next significant step to isolate thermally dimorphic fungi from blood as well as yeast، was using of lysis-centrifugation system. In this system blood placed into a tube with anticoagulant and lytic agent، and after centrifuge، the pellet culture on several appropriate solid media. Recently several continuous monitoring blood culture systems developed. In some of these systems including BACTEC series system، growth of organisms causes decrease in oxygen concentration and detect by a sensor which is at the bottom of each vial. In some blood culture system، growth can detect by fluorescence caused by shining UV light on the sensor at the bottom of the bottle. This review will focus on the several strategies to improve recovery of fungi from blood in blood culture systems.