Blood culture results at a research and training hospital and the importance of training

Sezgin, FM; Babaoğlu, Ülken Tunga

doi:10.4103/njcp.njcp_573_18

Cited by 1 publication

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“…In order to reduce the blood culture contamination rate, a wide range of strategies were proposed, such as the usage of alcohol-based antiseptics, the delegation of phlebotomy teams for blood culture collection, special blood culture collection kits, diversion of the first portion of blood, and the usage of sterile gloves together with educational programs for the medical personnel regarding blood culture usage and collection [ 13 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changes in Use of Blood Cultures in a COVID-19-Dedicated Tertiary Hospital

et al. 2022

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Blood cultures should be collected within an hour in the setting of sepsis/septic shock. The contamination rate should be below 3%. Worldwide reports have described an increase in blood contamination rates during the COVID-19 pandemic. We performed a retrospective analysis of the blood cultures collected during a 10-month period (March–December 2020) at NIID “Prof. Dr. Matei Balș”. The results were compared with data from the pre-pandemic period (March–December 2016) and with the existing data in the literature. During the pandemic, there was a significant decrease in the number of blood cultures collected (1274 blood cultures in 2020 vs. 5399 in 2016). The contamination rate was higher in 2020 (11.7%) compared to 2016 (8.2%), p < 0.001. The rate of infectious episodes in which the etiological agent was identified was constant: 11% in 2020 versus 11.9% in 2016, p = 0.479, but there were fewer invasive bacterial/fungal infections: 0.95/1000 patient days in 2020 vs. 2.39/1000 patient days in 2016, p < 0.001. We observed a change in the species distribution. The Gram-negative isolate’s proportion increased from 50.6% to 63.1% and the gram-positive isolate’s proportion decreased from 31.8% to 19%. Collection of a low number of blood cultures and a high contamination rate was identified in our clinic. In order to improve the usefulness of blood cultures as a diagnostic method, at least two sets should be collected in aseptic conditions.

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