Specimen collection and transport, anaerobic culture techniques, and identification of anaerobes.

Excellent progress has been made in recent years in the development and refinement of technical materials used for transporting specimens and growing and identifying anaerobes. Several good systems for maintaining swabs and vials for transporting liquid specimens are commercially available. Anaerobic bags are useful for transporting unusual specimens, such as tissue or bone, and are also a convenient way to incubate small numbers of plates. Several different types of anaerobic chambers, with or without gloves, and separately enclosed incubators are being used by an increasing number of laboratories. Prereduced anaerobically sterilized plates and biochemicals in tubes are available from several commercial sources. A new rapid identification microsystem based on tests for performed enzymes permits identification of many clinically significant anaerobes to the species level in 4 hr.