Cerebrospinal fluid culture is actually a bacterial culture taken from the patient’s cerebrospinal fluid. In the laboratory, it is recommended that the clinician, after taking the cerebrospinal fluid, injects the cerebrospinal fluid directly into a culture vial, which is then quickly sent to the microbiology room. Upon receipt of the specimen, the microbiology laboratory will place the specimen in an incubator and culture it for 5 days. If it does not report positive within 5 days, it is generally considered culture negative. If the patient has a central nervous system infection, the system will report positive during the incubation process. After a positive report, further processing is done to identify the causative organism, and drug sensitivity testing is performed.