biostudies-literatureUnknown14(3)Nannan Panday RS<h4>Background</h4>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.<h4>Methods</h4>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 depaPloS onee0214052https://www.ebi.ac.uk/biostudies/studies/S-EPMC6428292biostudies-literatureEvaluation of blood culture epidemiology and efficiency in a large European teaching hospital.PMC6428292van de Ven PMNannan Panday RSHekker TAMWang SNanayakkara PWBAlam NfalseEvaluation of blood culture epidemiology and efficiency in a large European teaching hospital.<h4>Background</h4>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.<h4>Methods</h4>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 depa2019-01-01T00:00:00Z20192026-07-17T01:40:03.416Z2019-08-04T07:37:48ZS-EPMC64282923089718610.1371/journal.pone.0214052