Which genital specimen to collect for which infection, the male and female differences, why gonococcus needs bedside inoculation and never refrigeration, when a swab beats urine, a...
Why tissue is the reference-standard specimen for deep infection, why the microbiology portion must be split off before formalin or decalcification, when to mince instead of grind,...
Why you swab both eyes even when one looks normal, how the specimen changes from conjunctivitis to a corneal ulcer, why eye samples are inoculated at the bedside, and when to think...
Why an open-wound swab is only as good as the technique, how the Levine method samples deep fluid instead of surface flora, how to tell colonization from infection, and when tissue...
How to collect and split pleural, ascitic, pericardial, and synovial fluid across the right containers, why some goes into a blood culture bottle, which anticoagulant not to use fo...
Why an ear-canal swab answers otitis externa but not otitis media, how to sample a discharging ear without collecting canal flora, when tympanocentesis is needed, and why acute oti...
How to take a throat swab that actually samples the tonsils and posterior pharynx, why the tongue and cheeks must be avoided, which test needs which swab, why children need a backu...
The organisms that cause UTI, how to collect and culture urine correctly, and how to read colony counts to separate real infection from contamination.
Step-by-step nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swab collection, how deep the swab should go and how to tell, which swabs are unacceptable, and how to store the specimen so the resul...
What each blood tube color means, the CLSI order of draw and why it exists, when a short or wrong-order draw must be redrawn, and which tube to choose when the ideal one is not ava...
Compare cotton, calcium alginate, Dacron, rayon, and nylon flocked swabs, and see which swab and shaft to use for each specimen type, from throat and wound to pertussis and GC cult...
How liquid Amies transport systems like eSwab let one collection serve culture, Gram stain, and PCR, which formats exist, and the specimens they are not suitable for.
Microbiology Sample Collection Guidelines and Rejection Criteria
Which specimen to collect for a suspected fungal infection by site, how to collect skin, nail, hair, blood, CSF, respiratory, urine, and tissue correctly, and the transport rule.
What is in viral transport medium and why, how it differs from universal transport medium and bacterial media like Amies, correct storage temperatures, and the freezing mistake tha...
