I think you're close, Tanya, but in my experience (which is over 20 years as a medical technologist in the clinical lab), a patient who is pan-cultured is one who has cultures of just about every possible specimen, i.e., blood, urine, sputum, throat...and other other applicable site. If any pathogenic bacteria are found, it would be identified and have a sensitivity performed to determine the appropriate antibiotic.So, marigayle, it's not so much a standard set of tests, but a wide variety of culture specimens. You'd usually find this on a patient with a fever of undetermined origin. CSF would probably be cultured, too!
This really isn't a definition, but it kind of makes it clear:
quote:
Laboratory evaluation of the bacteremic infant or child should follow a thorough physical examination and an estimation of degree of toxicity. Traditionally, in all infants younger than 4 weeks, a full laboratory evaluation is performed including blood for CBC, culture, urine for analysis and culture, and spinal fluid for cell count and culture. Following this pan-culture for the infant, inpatient care would include intravenous antibiotics, pending culture results.
The above from: http://author.emedicine.com/PED/topic196.htm
Hope this helps you, too!
Tanya, as I read your response again, you really did have it, but I didn't understand what you meant by looking for something specific. Performing cultures is like solving a mystery! You never know what's going to grow there!
[ 06-15-2001: Message edited by: RedSonya ]
