Kim,
I only recommend breastmilk cultures for women who are having lots of 
breast pain or acute mastitis. I strongly recommend NOT doing breastmilk 
cultures to further explore an infant's symptoms of sepsis or other 
illness while in the NICU. Dr. Richard Schanler did a nice study 
demonstrating that there is no correlation between the bacteria 
responsible for a NICU baby's illness and mom's breastmilk culture 
results. This just ends up being a witch hunt, destroying breastfeeding.
No matter what is found in terms of bacteria in breastmilk for women 
with a breast infection, I don't take babies off the breast.
Infants have a gut immune system to detoxify bacteria that come thru the 
gut. The bacteria in breastmilk that are consumed by the baby are not 
responsible for their infections.

Anne

On 5/31/2012 10:15 AM, LACTNET automatic digest system wrote:
> So what are the reasons for doing a breastmilk culture?  I work in a level 3
> >  NICU setting where they had cultured breastmilk any time a baby got 'sick'.
> >    They backed off of that after the research that came out last summer. Now
> >  our Blood Stream infections are trending up so they want to culture the
> >  breastmilk for any baby that gets a BSI. Then the nurse just sends down some
> >  breastmilk to the lab...it may be fresh, it may be frozen.  Im so confused
> >  about this issue as I have heard it is not necessary to culture EBM....not
> >  sure what it is really showing? In the past they will hold moms milk if it
> >  comes back>10,000 coag. neg staph. The breastmilk will be recultured and
> >  used if<  10,000. REALLY want to hear others thoughts....how y'all are doing
> >  things etc.

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