ArticleNigerian medical journal : journal of the Nigeria Medical Association2014
Quality assurance in blood culture: A retrospective study of blood culture contamination rate in a tertiary hospital in Nigeria.
Article in Nigerian medical journal : journal of the Nigeria Medical Association, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- A retrospective analysis of emergency department cultures in a tertiary care center.BMC infectious diseases · 2026Article
- Taming the contaminants: a quality improvement initiative to minimize blood culture contamination and enhance patient care in a resource-limited setting.BMC microbiology · 2026Article
- Risk factors for blood culture contamination in a tertiary hospital: a one-year retrospective analysis.BMC infectious diseases · 2026Article
- Multiyear experience with blood culture results from a tertiary care hospital in Saudi Arabia: a retrospective study.BMC infectious diseases · 2025Article
- Contaminant Organism Growth in Febrile Infants at Low Risk for Invasive Bacterial Infection.The Journal of pediatrics · 2024Article
- Trends of Bloodstream Infections in a University Hospital During 12 Years.Polish journal of microbiology · 2022Article
- Blood Culture Contamination Rate as a Quality Indicator - a Prospective Observational Study.Maedica · 2022Article
- Multidrug-Resistant Bacteria Isolated from Blood Culture Samples in a Moroccan Tertiary Hospital: True Bacteremia or Contamination?Infection and drug resistance · 2022Article
- Underutilization and Quality Gaps in Blood Culture Processing in Public Hospitals of Peru.The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene · 2021Article
- Blood Culture Testing Outcomes among Non-Malarial Febrile Children at Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Sites in Uganda, 2017-2018.Tropical medicine and infectious disease · 2021Article
- Blood culture contamination in a tertiary care hospital of Saudi Arabia. A one-year study.Saudi medical journal · 2020Article
- Combination of PCT, sNFI and dCHC for the diagnosis of ascites infection in cirrhotic patients.BMC infectious diseases · 2018Article
- A Multicenter Evaluation of Blood Culture Practices, Contamination Rates, and the Distribution of Causative Bacteria.Jundishapur journal of microbiology · 2016Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundBlood culture is a critical tool for diagnosing septicaemia. Quite frequently, contamination of blood sample poses a great challenge to accurate diagnosis. This study evaluated the rate of blood culture contamination in our hospital over a one-year period. MATERIALS AND
methodsIt was a retrospective study of 1032 blood cultures carried out in a clinical laboratory of a tertiary hospital in North Central part of Nigeria between 2010 and 2011.
resultsThere were 730 blood cultures from paediatric and 302 adult patients. The overall yield was 22%; 107 out of the 730 were contaminated giving a contamination rate of 10.4%. Contamination rate was higher in children than in adult (11% vs 8%) specimen. These rates were much higher than the acceptable benchmark of 2-3%. The main contaminants were coagulase negative Staphylococcus, Bacillus species, Diphtheroids and Enterococcus species.
conclusionContamination rate is high, and mainly due to normal skin flora, suggesting aseptic collection challenges as the main cause. We recommend a review of the entire process of blood collection for culture and analysis with a view to instituting appropriate quality assurance measures to reduce the contamination rate.
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