Blood culture contamination rates
“Initial central venous blood culture sampling before CVC insertion is a simple approach that does not generate additional costs and may reduce contamination while preserving accurate pathogen detection, thereby potentially improving diagnostic certainty and supporting antimicrobial stewardship” Hellenthal et al (2026).
Time to blood culture positivity and Candidemia management – Full Text
“Blood culture positivity times differ among Candida species. Early TTP species, such as C. albicans and C. tropicalis, were more likely to be fluconazole-susceptible, suggesting that fluconazole may be an appropriate option for empirical therapy in such infections” Öz et al (2026).
PIVO device to reduce blood culture contamination in the ED
“PIVO significantly reduced blood culture contamination and demonstrated strong feasibility in a high-acuity emergency department” Skuras and Curylo (2026).
Pre-analytical barriers to blood culture collection – Full Text
“We aimed to assess variations in laboratory investigation of bloodstream infection and sepsis throughout a state-wide laboratory network, with the goal to design suitable remedial action” Inglis et al (2026).
Blood culture pathways in UK hospitals
“We conducted a nationwide survey (1 February 2024-6 February 2025) of microbiology laboratories across England and Scotland to assess BC pathways, turnaround times for organism identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST), availability of rapid methods, operational hours, and result communication” Drury et al (2026).
Single-venipuncture strategy for blood culture collection
“The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of SE on the diagnostic performance of blood cultures in a high-demand emergency department” Gimeno Gascón et al (2026).
Characteristics associated with positive pediatric blood cultures
“We defined clinical characteristics associated with children who had clinically significant BSI. These data should be considered when developing guidance for which children warrant blood culture collection for BSI evaluation. The majority of BSIs are identified within 36 hours of collection” Patel et al (2026).
Comparative evaluation of pediatric blood culture bottles
“This study systematically evaluated the performance of the new-generation BacT/ALERT PF Plus pediatric blood culture bottle against the standard PF bottle” Ma et al (2026).
Review of blood culture diversion devices
“Blood culture diversion (BCD), particularly via blood culture diversion devices (BCDDs), has emerged as a promising strategy to reduce BCC. BCDDs divert initial blood flow likely contaminated with skin flora, thereby improving diagnostic accuracy” Otter et al (2026).
Blood culture stewardship – Full Text
“At two hospitals during the shortage, SEP-1 metric compliance declined related to BCx utilization. Review of cases where BCx were not obtained demonstrated most BCx were safely avoided without demonstrable patient harm” Ryder et al (2025).
Impact of stewardship practices on blood culture collection – Full Text
“Formulating safe and effective diagnostic stewardship guidance for blood cultures in immunocompromised patients is challenging due to limited data and high risk of infectious complications. A 2024 global shortage in blood culture bottles (BD Diagnostics) necessitated the implementation of blood culture stewardship, including at our tertiary care cancer center” She et al (2025).
Blood culture contamination rates in children
“Active feedback is likely to maintain low contamination rates during the pandemic. The decrease in occult bacteremia suggests that enhanced infection control measures influenced pediatric infectious disease patterns” Aiba et al (2025).
Electronic prompt for blood culture collection
“If blood cultures had not been collected, the pharmacist manually recorded a prompt in the patient’s electronic medical record recommending the collection of two sets of blood cultures” Shibata et al (2025).
Blood cultures in extremely preterm infants – Full Text
“Most EP infants admitted to an all-referral Level IV NICU had a blood culture drawn. The rate of positive cultures was relatively low, although EP infants with positive blood cultures had higher rates of mortality and morbidities” Sharadgah et al (2025).
Review of paired central and peripheral blood cultures
“CLABSI can be diagnosed by differential time to positivity (DTP), where central venous line (CVL) blood cultures grow 120 minutes faster than peripheral cultures drawn at the same time. Peripheral cultures cause patient discomfort, risk contamination with skin flora, may cause delays in clinical care, and the overall impact is uncertain. We investigated our institution’s paired blood culture practice to assess the utility and clinical impact of peripheral cultures” Prudowsky et al (2025).
Impact of blood diversion during blood culture collection
“This quality improvement study reports a 34.45% reduction in contamination rates using the initial specimen blood diversion technique. Although there was a significant decrease in the rate of contamination, we were unable to achieve a rate of less than 1.0% without a sterile closed system device” Moore et al (2025).
Blood cultures processing after death
“Blood cultures (BC) are essential for the diagnosis of bloodstream infections (BSI). BSI can be inaccurately attributed due to BC contamination or bacterial translocation. Reporting BCs after patient death can be inaccurate and potentially increase BSI incidence” Heather et al (2025).
Key performance indicators in the blood culture process – Full Text
“This study aimed to describe an automated tool, BD DREAM™ (Digital Remote Extraction Analysis & Monitoring), designed for monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) in the BCs process” Palmieri et al (2025).
Reducing unnecessary blood cultures in oncology
“A BCx algorithm implementation in a solid-tumor oncology unit led to a substantial decrease in BCx event rates without an increase in adverse outcomes” Meraet al (2025).
Evaluation of blood culture contamination – Full Text
“Sharing BCC data outside of the laboratory, measuring additional BCx quality indicators, and limiting central catheter-drawn BCx were associated with lower BCC rates” Fabre et al (2025).
Blood culture contamination creep – Full Text
“In a low-COVID-19-burden secondary care teaching hospital setting, blood culture contamination rates have progressively increased over the past decade, irrespective of the pandemic. These findings underscore the importance of sustained vigilance in infection prevention and control practices, strict adherence to blood culture collection protocols, and the ongoing need for staff training” Jeverica et al (2025).
Review of blood culture single-sampling strategy and initial specimen diversion – Full Text
“After combined implementation of SSS and initial specimen diversion (ISDT) in our region, we evaluated the proportion of sampling events with at least four bottles, with growth of relevant pathogens and with growth of coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS) before and after the intervention” Oldberg et al (2025).
Management of a positive blood cultures
“There is considerable practice variation among ED physicians for the management of positive blood cultures in children across Canada. Incongruencies in the perceived impact of clinical factors on the likelihood of a true bacteremia, such as time-to-positivity, highlight the need for a standardized decision-making tool” Gouin et al (2025).
Impact of delayed blood culture transport time – Full Text
“There is a marginal loss of growth for every hour a blood culture is left unincubated, with the loss of recovery of Streptococcus pyogenes and other streptococci being most common. There was no evidence of a reduction in Gram-negatives, anaerobes, or yeasts” Deas et al (2025).
Blood culture bundle decreases blood culture contamination – Full Text
“We found that the blood culture bundle program was successful at decreasing the blood culture contamination, preventing additional hospital stay and treatment costs in the NICU” Çalkavur et al (2025).
Pediatric blood culture contamination rates
“Younger patient age and ED nurse blood cultures had greater odds of contamination. Results can inform focused training on quality collection and testing techniques, as well as the creation of enhanced staffing models to increase phlebotomist collections” Childress et al (2025).
Blood culture standard operating procedure compliance
“Our study highlights how educational interventions can influence quality of BC. Continuous monitoring and interventions are key for quality improvement in BC processes” Fernandes et al (2025).
Follow-up blood cultures in gram-negative bloodstream infections – Full Text
“In this review, we aim to evaluate the strengths and limitations of the most significant studies on FUBCs in GN-BSIs, proposing a more personalized approach for using FUBCs in GN-BSIs” Tziolos and Kofteridis (2025).
Blood culture diagnostic stewardship model – Full Text
“The medical community recently experienced a severe shortage of blood culture media bottles. Rates of blood stream infection (BSI) among critically ill children are low. We sought to design a machine learning (ML) model able to identify children at low risk for BSI to improve blood culture diagnostic stewardship” Martin et al (2025).
Indicators for positive blood culture detection – Full Text
“Laboratory analytical indicators such as patient source, transportation mode, and personnel rotation significantly impacted the positive detection rate or time of blood culture” Wang et al (2025).