Streamlining Clostridium difficile Diagnosis with Swabs

A small study suggests that analyzing stool-stained swabs might obviate the need for collecting stool samples.

Prompt diagnosis and treatment of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) often are complicated by the most mundane of difficulties: obtaining adequate stool specimens. Hospitalized patients with severe infections might have ileus and produce no stool, or they might be too confused to cooperate. Outpatients might not be able to produce or deliver samples on demand.

At a single Cleveland hospital, researchers evaluated the performance of the far more user-friendly swab in diagnosing CDI among 139 consecutive inpatients with diarrhea. Swabs and stool specimens from each patient were sent to the same hospital laboratory, where both were evaluated with commercial polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays; swabs also were cultured for toxigenic C. dif…

Reviewing Author

Abigail Zuger, MD

Disclosures

Nothing to disclose

Abigail Zuger, MD

Disclosures

Nothing to disclose