Blood culture utilization and impact of stewardship practices during a national blood culture bottle shortage at a cancer center.

ABSTRACT: Formulating safe and effective diagnostic stewardship guidance for blood cultures in immunocompromised patients is challenging due to limited data and high risk of infectious complications. A 2024 global shortage in blood culture bottles (BD Diagnostics) necessitated the implementation of blood culture stewardship, including at our tertiary care cancer center. This was a retrospective pre-post intervention study of the effects of diagnostic stewardship at a stand-alone cancer center during a 5-month period of the 2024 blood culture bottle shortage compared to the same 5-month unaffected period in 2023. Interventions included discontinuation of an ordering set for persistent fever, modification of an ordering set for new fever to recommend two sets of blood cultures for initial workup, and

SUBMITTER: She RC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12802142 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature