Strategies on reducing blood culture contamination

Blood culture contamination (BCC) is a common problem in hospitals; contaminated or false-positive blood cultures may confuse the clinicians, precipitate unnecessary antibiotics usage as well as prolonging the hospital stay for patients. Although it is not possible to eliminate BCC, it is important that we introduce methods to reduce BCC. These methods include changes to the sampling technique to increase the chance of sterility, selection of appropriate skin prep kits, using a trained phlebotomy team rather than junior doctors, and introducing an interactive approach, along with clinical clues and laboratory tests for the classification of blood culture results to minimize BCC rate. (C) 2012 Wolters Kluwer Health | Lippincott Williams & Wilkins