Evaluation of blood culture epidemiology and efficiency in a large European teaching hospital.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Blood cultures remain the gold standard for detecting bacteremia despite their limitations. The current practice of blood culture collection is still inefficient with low yields. Limited focus has been given to the association between timing of specimen collection at different time points during admission and their yield.

Methods

We carried out a retrospective observational study by analyzing all 3,890 sets of cultures collected from the 1,962 admitted patients over the seven-month period of this study. We compared the blood culture yield between the early group (≤24 hours after admission) and the late group (> 24 hours of admission). We also investigated the effect of prehospital oral antibiotics and pre-analytical time on the first cultures in the emergency depa

SUBMITTER: Nannan Panday RS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6428292 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature