A Comparative Study of Traditional and Molecular Methods for Detecting Bacterial Infections in Tertiary Care Hospitals

Timely and accurate detection of bacterial infections in tertiary care hospitals is essential for effective patient management and antimicrobial stewardships. Traditional clinical methods, mainly culture-based techniques, remain gold standard for identification of bacteria. After morphological and biochemical analyzes in incubation of clinical samples in these methods, antibiotic sensitivity allows the isolation of feasible pathogens for testing. However, traditional methods are labor-intensive and time taking time, often requiring several days for certain results. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR), nucleic acid amplification tests, and molecular clinical methods, including mass spectrometry, provide sensitive and unique identity directly, rapidly, rapidly from clinical samples. These techniques greatly reduce turnaround time and improve rapid, slow growing or non-cultural bacteria detection