Sternheimer-Mablin urinary stain / bacterial contamination

RE: Sternheimer-Mablin urinary stain / bacterial contamination

Sal the 1st — Thu, 26 Jul 2018 12:58:53 GMT

[quote user="David Gibbins"]

But then with so little lab work being done in-house these days, the skill set is vanishing.

[/quote]

just about gone in most places - its too easy to stick things in an envelope with a request slip and add to that H+S ... the skills to do in house are lost and nobody seems to care which I find really sad. I do virtually nothing lab wise now except make the odd blood smear or impression, a urine dip and spin or stick a blood sample through the catalyst.. I used to back up every haematology sample on the machine with a quick squiz under the scope at a smear - I don't do any of that now and after so long I am not sure I would have the confidence anymore

RE: Sternheimer-Mablin urinary stain / bacterial contamination

David Gibbins — Thu, 26 Jul 2018 11:06:47 GMT

I know the environmental factor tends to be overlooked a lot in practises. The downside of lab space often being the last thing to be considered.

which is a pity as clean cabinets/hoods are quite reasonably priced these days. But then with so little lab work being done in-house these days, the skill set is vanishing.

RE: Sternheimer-Mablin urinary stain / bacterial contamination

Sal the 1st — Thu, 26 Jul 2018 10:29:30 GMT

[quote user="David Gibbins"]

wondering how much of the "problem" with sedistain is just user error/ using stains that are to old.

[/quote]

I would say it is a quite a big contributory factor but I don't think that is the whole as sedistain does support growth and I could get interesting results from a brand new bottle - when I had a group of trainees it was easier to give them some of their own stain in a centrifuge tube that they would then use for the rest of the session on their samples - wasteful maybe but it helped prevent contamination of the stock bottle. Maybe it would have been interesting to plate out some of the remaining stain at the end of the session and it would have shown which trainees had the best technique (least growth)?

Maybe I should have written some of this stuff down in the past and made it a study but at the time it was just a case of getting the job done and enjoying what I was doing - I am hopeless as an academic I'm afraid

RE: Sternheimer-Mablin urinary stain / bacterial contamination

David Gibbins — Thu, 26 Jul 2018 00:00:22 GMT

Nice to see someone else who has done some plating too

RE: Sternheimer-Mablin urinary stain / bacterial contamination

David Gibbins — Wed, 25 Jul 2018 23:59:21 GMT

wondering how much of the "problem" with sedistain is just user error/ using stains that are to old.

When i was at Sigma we did a lot of culturing and i don't recal having any issue with stain contamination. But then we used it really quickly/ made fresh stains as needed.

RE: Sternheimer-Mablin urinary stain / bacterial contamination

Sal the 1st — Wed, 25 Jul 2018 20:58:11 GMT

cant offer you a paper but you can prove this one for yourself. I used to do a lot of cultures when I worked in a charity hospital - mostly sentest using DSTA plates incubated at 37 degrees for 12 - 24 hours- if I was doing a lot of urine plates I also included a plate of just stain. The stain (control) plate always produced growth and dependent on how long it had been in use this growth could be quite profuse.

Taking this a step further even a pristine, virgin, unopened bottle of stain will produce growth.At least this way I had an idea what may have been artifact and what was a truly nasty UTI.

This isn't restricted to sedstain, it occurs in quite a few - especially those that are rarely used and sit around in the cupboard for years ( I remember Sudan 11 used to be quite bad for this).

Kova stain is a lot cheaper than sedistain and does the same job for those that are interested

Sorry I have looked I cannot find you a study paper either but if your local college has a microbiology dept this wouldn't be that hard for you to do yourself.

If you are in teaching you could even use this as an exercise with students and they could learn how to do their own plates and identify what they had grown