Lessons Learnt from Anaerobic Culture of Clinical Samples in a Routine Microbiology Laboratory

Anaerobic bacteria can occur as commensals, while also being able to cause life-threatening infections. Isolation of anaerobic bacteria from clinical samples is not given much importance in clinical practice, as they usually respond to antibiotics given for aerobes or facultative anaerobic bacteria. We faced some challenges during the study, which was done to isolate the anaerobes prevalent in our tertiary care hospital. We also encountered some pitfalls when processing the samples and using the Gas Pak system, which are reported in this study.