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Review
. 2020 Dec;40(4):379-392.
doi: 10.1016/j.cll.2020.07.001. Epub 2020 Sep 19.

Modern Blood Culture: Management Decisions and Method Options

Mark D Gonzalez  1 , Timothy Chao  2 , Matthew A Pettengill  3
Affiliations
Review

Modern Blood Culture: Management Decisions and Method Options

Mark D Gonzalez et al. Clin Lab Med. 2020 Dec.

Abstract

The optimal care of septic patients depends on the successful recovery of clinically relevant microorganisms from blood cultures and the timely reporting of organism identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) results. Many preanalytic factors play a critical role in culturing microorganisms, and advancements in blood culture instrument technology have reduced the time to positive results. Additionally, rapid organism identification and AST results directly from positive blood culture broth via new methods help to further shorten the time from empiric to targeted treatment. This article summarizes the current state of blood culture methods, including preanalytic, analytical, and postanalytic factors that are available to clinical microbiology laboratories.

Keywords: Blood culture; Bloodstream infections; Contamination; Sepsis.

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Conflict of interest statement

Disclosure The authors do not have any external funding or conflicts of interest.

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