Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
TURKISH JOURNAL OF PEDIATRICS, cilt.67, sa.2, ss.135-143, 2025 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus, TRDizin)
Background. Isolating microorganisms from blood cultures is the gold standard for identifying the cause of sepsis. However, contamination of the blood culture is a significant barrier to the blood culture's utility. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the impact of blood culture bundles on the incidence of contamination in the Methods. A prospective research to compare pre-bundle and bundle periods was created. During the bundle period, a bundle for blood culture sampling was implemented. The numbers of unnecessary antibiotic days and hospital stay following a false positive blood culture were used to calculate costs.
Results. A total of 320 neonatal blood culture procedures were included. The rate of blood culture contamination was 3.8% in the bundle and 12.5% in the pre-bundle period, this was significantly higher in the pre-bundle period (p<0.001). The implementation of the blood culture bundle reduced blood culture contamination by 69.6%. The average number of hospital days attributed to blood culture contamination was 3.8 days. The average cost of a hospital stay due to contamination of one blood culture was $883.12. During the study, 14 blood culture contaminations, 54 unnecessary NICU stay days were avoided and $12549.6 were saved.
Conclusions. We found that the blood culture bundle program was successful at decreasing the blood culture contamination, preventing additional hospital stay and treatment costs in the NICU.