Effective immediately, the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory will institute the following procedures pertaining to the processing of various clinical specimens. All requests for fungal culture will now have both a smear (calcofluor-KOH) and culture performed routinely. When a fungus smear only is requested, the calcofluor-KOH stain will be done. Requests for the detection of Pneumocystis carinii will be accomplished by a monoclonal Direct Florescence Antibody (DFA) procedure. Similarly, direct detection of Herpes viruses in skin lesion specimens will be done by DFA. All of these procedures will be performed in the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory daily on the first shift. These procedures will be done only when specifically requested on the requisition. For example, if you require bacteriology, fungus, PCP and Herpes virus evaluation on the same specimen, please check all four boxes on the requisition.

Please direct questions or comments regarding these policy changes to Gary V. Doern, Ph.D., (6-8616) Director, Clinical Microbiology Laboratory. Thank you for your cooperation.