Observational studyPloS one2019
Evaluation of blood culture epidemiology and efficiency in a large European teaching hospital.
Observational study in PloS one, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 48 papers.
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Who cites it
48 citing papers in PubMed.
- Effects of a clinical metagenomics intervention on clinical outcomes, healthcare costs, and health-related quality of life in patients with sepsis or septic shock: results of the randomized-controlled DigiSep trial.Intensive care medicine · 2026Trial
- Evaluation of ambulance blood cultures in patients with suspected sepsis. A rural prospective cohort study.Infection · 2026Article
- Bacteremia prediction models to reduce unnecessary blood cultures: external validation in a large US emergency department.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Development and validation of a bacteremia prediction score for adult emergency department patients using hybrid machine learning and regression.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Balancing Speed and Cost: Economic Insights from Rapid Diagnostic Testing in Bloodstream Infections.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Article
- Veterinary blood culture diagnostic testing: methodology and results from a German single-center study on dogs (2014-2022).Journal of veterinary internal medicine · 2026Article
- Real-life impact of clinical metagenomics in the intensive care unit: a multicenter retrospective study in greater paris area hospitals.Critical care (London, England) · 2026Article
- Electronic clinical decision support system guided blood culture stewardship in emergency departments: response to the national blood culture media shortage.Infection control and hospital epidemiology · 2025Article
- Association between Charlson Comorbidity Index and positive blood cultures at a tertiary-care hospital in Indonesia.PLOS global public health · 2025Article
- A comprehensive evaluation of plasma metagenomics sequencing for the diagnosis of suspected infection in pediatric patients with hematologic diseases.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2025Article
- Bloodstream Infection and Associated Factors at University of Gondar Comprehensive Specialized Hospital, Northwest Ethiopia, 2023: A Prospective Cross-Sectional Study.BioMed research international · 2025Article
- Changes in the epidemiology of neonatal bacteremia during the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan, China.European journal of clinical microbiology & infectious diseases : official publication of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology · 2025Article
- Investigating the time to blood culture positivity: why does it take so long?Journal of medical microbiology · 2025Article
- Multicentre external validation of the Neonatal Healthcare-associated infectiOn Prediction (NeoHoP) score: a retrospective case-control study.BMJ paediatrics open · 2024Observational
- Article
- Validation of SeptiCyte RAPID to Discriminate Sepsis from Non-Infectious Systemic Inflammation.Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Article
- Analysis of microbiological tests in patients withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment at the end stage of life in 2 Korean hospitals.Infection control and hospital epidemiology · 2024Article
- Impact of Blood Culture Contamination on Antibiotic Use, Resource Utilization, and Clinical Outcomes: A Retrospective Cohort Study in Dutch and US Hospitals.Open forum infectious diseases · 2024Article
- Assessing sepsis-induced immunosuppression to predict positive blood cultures.Frontiers in immunology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundBlood 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.
methodsWe 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 department. Epidemiology and efficiency of blood cultures were studied for each medical specialty.
resultsIn total, 3,349(86.1%) blood cultures were negative and 541(13.9%) were positive for one or more microorganisms. After correcting for contamination, the overall yield was 290 (7.5%). The early group (n = 1,490) yielded significantly more true-positive cultures (10.1% versus 5.8%, P<0.001) than the late group (n = 2,400). The emergency department had a significantly higher yield than general wards, 11.2% versus 5.7% (p<0.001). Prehospital oral antibiotic use and pre-analytical time did not affect the yield of first cultures at the emergency department (p = 0.735 and 0.816 respectively). The number of tests needed to obtain one true-positive culture varied between departments, ranging from 7 to 45.
conclusionThis study showed that blood cultures are inefficient in detecting bacteremia. Cultures collected during 24 hours after admission yielded more positive results than those collected later. Significant variations in blood culture epidemiology and efficiency per specialty suggest that guidelines should be reevaluated. Future studies should aim at improving blood culture yield, implementing educational programs to reduce contamination and cost-effective application of modern molecular diagnostic technologies.
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