CAMC has adopted a state-of-the-art rapid diagnostic technology focused on helping medical professionals deliver optimal antibiotic therapies more quickly for patients suffering from serious infections.

Getting patients on optimal therapy is critical in the treatment of infectious diseases. The Accelerate Pheno® system is designed to help clinicians do just that for patients with bloodstream infections. Faster diagnostic results enable providers to improve outcomes, reduce the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics, and shorten patients’ length of stay, which also can help reduce the risk of patients developing sepsis.

Sepsis is the body’s overwhelming response to infection, which can lead to tissue damage, organ failure, amputations and death. In the U.S. alone, more than 1.5 million people develop sepsis and 250,000 die from it annually. Early diagnosis and targeted antibiotic therapy is crucial to reducing mortality among septic patients.

The Accelerate Pheno® system identifies organisms direct from positive blood cultures and performs antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) to determine which drugs, at which concentrations, may be most effective in treating the organism. Traditional AST can take 48 hours or more, whereas the Accelerate Pheno® system delivers results in about 7 hours.

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