Submission Date	Dec 21,2015
Acceptance Date	Apr,16,2016
Publishing Date	May 10,2016
Type of Paper	Research Article
Mode of Access	Open Access
Author	Dasarathi Das*, Prakasini Satapathy, Biswanath Murmu
Affiliation	Tuberculosis Division, Regional Medical Research Centre*, South Eastern Railways Complex, Bhubaneswar-751023, India
Country	India
Contact	drdas60@rediffmail.com

Abstract

Sputum decontamination by modified Petroff’s method is routinely used by many laboratories for isolation of Mycobacteria in solid culture. With the introduction of line probe assay (LPA) for MDR TB diagnosis, our laboratory adopted the recommended NALC–NaOH decontamination procedure for sputum processing. Out of 284 and 1039 specimens processed by modified Petroff’s and NALC-NaOH, significantly high percentage (P=0.004) of contamination was observed by the latter method. In the initial period, the contamination reached 19.5% with the NALC-NaOH method and reduced with time. Laboratories adopting new decontamination methods may be careful during the initial months for avoiding the loss of specimen due to contamination while adopting LPA.