Comparison of Microbial Detection of Hemodialysis Water in Reasoner’s 2A Agar (R2A) and Trypticase Soy Agar (TSA)

The quality management of dialysis water used as dialysis fluid is important forpatients exposed to large amounts of water. The treatment of dialysis watercauses chemical and microbiological contamination. Dialysis water contaminatedwith bacteria causes various diseases and inflammatory reactions due to theinflow of toxins into the body. Consequently, the aim of this study was tounderstand the sensitivity of agar for the detection of bacteria in dialysis water,the seasonal characteristics of bacterial culture, and bacterial identification. In all,420 samples of dialysis water collected from a hospital between September 2017and August 2018 were cultured at clinical laboratories. The bacterial growth rateof R2A was 99 cases (23.5%), and that of TSA was 47 cases (11.1%). R2A wasmore sensitive than TSA for samples incubated above 1 CFU/ml in hemodialysis,and TSA was more sensitive than R2A for samples incubated above 50 CFU/ml. The morphological characteristics of the microorganisms were confirmed by gramstaining 188 strains of 30 isolates from the specimens. In R2A, Gram-positivebacteria were isolated in 33.3% (n = 42), Gram-negative bacteria were isolatedin 56.3% (n = 71), and fungal strains were isolated in 10.3% (n = 13). In TSA,Gram-positive bacteria were isolated in 33.8% (n = 21), Gram-negative bacteriawere isolated in 64.5% (n = 40), and fungal strains were isolated in 1.6% (n =1). In addition, seasonal distinctions were observed in microbial cultures KCI Citation Count: 0