To the Editor.听
鈥擳he spontaneous bacterial peritonitis (SBP) with negative culture has been described and accepted as a variant of SBP.1 We have read with great interest the article by Runyon and coworkers in the January 1987 issue of the Archives2 and noted the improved culture sensitivity to 91% by direct inoculation of blood culture bottles (BCB) with ascitic fluid. We describe our experience with a similar method.Our hospital is a 123-ward community hospital. Since March 1985, we have been using direct inoculation of BCB with ascitic fluid (10 mL) at the bedside as part of a prospective study on SBP. Our results before and after using BCB are shown in the Table. The differences we have found are not statistically significant (P=.11, exact probability test, even including three cases of spontaneous umbilical perforation).Although this method increased ascitic culture sensitivity at our hospital, we have