A study published in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology examined the pattern of blood culture utilization in an academic university hospital setting.
Researchers analyzed blood cultures collected from adult inpatients at Philadelphia-based Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania between July 1, 2014, and June 30, 2015. They used descriptive statistics and regression models to analyze patterns of blood culture utilization.
In all, researchers studied 38,939 blood culture drawn during 126,537 patient days. They found:
1. The median number of blood culture sets drawn per hospital encounter was two.
2. The median interval between blood cultures was two days.
3. Emergency services had the highest rate of drawing single blood-culture sets (16.9 percent).
4. Oncology services had the highest frequency of drawing five or more blood culture sets within 24 hours (0.91 percent).
5. The relative risk of a patient having repeat blood cultures was lower for those in emergency, surgery and oncology services than for those in general medicine.