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Is it time for a culture change? Blood culture collection in the emergency department
Author(s) -
Denny Kerina J,
Sweeny Amy,
Crilly Julia,
Maloney Samuel,
Keijzers Gerben
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
emergency medicine australasia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.602
H-Index - 52
eISSN - 1742-6723
pISSN - 1742-6731
DOI - 10.1111/1742-6723.13122
Subject(s) - medicine , emergency department , incidence (geometry) , false positive paradox , blood culture , retrospective cohort study , emergency medicine , medical emergency , statistics , psychiatry , physics , mathematics , microbiology and biotechnology , optics , biology , antibiotics
Objective To describe how frequently blood cultures (BCs) are obtained in the ED and to describe the incidence of true‐ and false‐positive BC results. Methods Retrospective descriptive study of all patients presenting to a tertiary‐level, mixed Australian ED over a 15 month period. Results A total of 3617 (3.67%) patients had BCs collected. Around one (12.1%) in eight of these BCs were positive; nearly half (45.2%) of which were identified as a false positive. Conclusions BCs are a common investigation in the ED with a high false‐positive rate. Strategies are required to reduce false positives, including reducing inappropriate collection and improving collection techniques.