Saturday, November 6, 2010
A really easy way to reduce blood culture contamination
A new paper in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology caught my eye. By making a minor modification in blood culture collection technique, the study's authors demonstrated a reduction in blood culture contamination by 50% (2.8% vs. 1.4%, p=0.005). Using a butterfly needle and a vacutainer system, an extra tube was used to collect the first mL of blood. This tube was discarded, then the blood was obtained for the culture. The authors hypothesized that skin fragments contaminated with bacteria from the venipuncture can lead to contamination of the blood culture. By discarding the initial 1 mL containing the skin fragments, a significant reduction in blood culture contamination was noted.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
OSHA! OSHA! OSHA!
In many parts of the country, as rates of COVID-19 are declining and vaccination coverage is increasing (albeit with substantial variati...
-
In many parts of the country, as rates of COVID-19 are declining and vaccination coverage is increasing (albeit with substantial variati... -
This is a guest post by Jorge Salinas, MD, Hospital Epidemiologist at the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics. There is virtually no...
-
I’m surprised that we can’t stop arguing about the modes of SARS-CoV-2 transmission, despite the fact that most experts (including our frie...
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for submitting your comment to the Controversies blog. To reduce spam, all comments will be reviewed by the blog moderator prior to publishing. However, all legitimate comments will be published, whether they agree with or oppose the content of the post.