Loading...
The rate of pathogen isolation from blood cultures is most strongly influenced by blood volume. Obtaining adequate blood volume from an ill child can be technically difficult, however, and a negative result from a culture with inadequate volume might falsely exclude the diagnosis of bacteremia. Investigators at a children’s hospital in Australia assessed the proportion of blood cultures with blood volumes that were inadequate for detecting bacteremia and examined the effect of an educational intervention designed to increase the proportion of cultures with adequate volume.
Blood culture submissions were classified as “adequate” if the appropriate volume (defined according to age) was collected in a bottle of the correct size. The interventio…