Can diagnostic stewardship reduce the harms of blood culture contamination?
Blood culture contamination (BCC) leads to increased costs and patient harms. We reviewed 525 BCC cases and found 71.2% of BCC cases were ordered for indications with low risk for bacteremia and most received unnecessary tests and antibiotics. Diagnostic stewardship of blood cultures may reduce BCC and its associated costs.
Authors
- Warren W. Acker (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9338-8782)
- Husain Poonawala (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4334-7226)
Institutions
- Tufts Medical Center (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology
- Published
- 2026-01-19
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1017/ice.2025.10381
- Primary Topic
- Bacterial Identification and Susceptibility Testing
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00