I recently asked if the dwell time of dianeal matters in diagnosing peritonitis. The answer was (paraphrased) as long as it's in for 2 hours or longer. The second part of the questions is, does the amount of dianeal matter. If a patient comes in for peritonitis testing, and the center drains 300 cc's of fluid; can that amount of fluid be tested, and would the results be correct? Is there any type of dilution or concentration that may throw labs off?
1 answer
The amount drained will not be a major issue. Innoculation of blood culture bottles can help reduce the culture negative rate. Sometimes, centrifugation of a PD bag can improve the microbiological yield so ideally if an entire PD bag can be sent off that would be better, especially if you are noticing a high culture negative rate.
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