Blood Cultures — Still Useful in Neutropenic Fever

Nine percent of blood cultures from patients with high-risk neutropenic fever grew pathogens; in half of such episodes, the culture results prompted treatment modification.

The management of neutropenic fever is described in national and international evidence-based guidelines and follows a well-defined algorithm that takes patients' risk factors into account. Blood cultures are part of this algorithm, but the yield and the diagnostic significance of such cultures are unclear.

To explore this issue, researchers in Germany reevaluated the results of 2520 blood cultures obtained from 126 consecutive patients with high-risk neutropenic fever between January 2000 and June 2004 (265 episodes of neutropenic fever, each lasting ≥10 days). All patients were being treated for acute lymphoblastic or myeloid leukemia or had undergone autologous stem cell transplantation for other hematological malignancies, and all receiv…

Reviewing Author

Thomas Glück, MD

Disclosures

Editorial BoardsConsilium Infectiorum by InfectoPharm, Infection

Thomas Glück, MD

Disclosures

Editorial BoardsConsilium Infectiorum by InfectoPharm, Infection