The problem with false-positive blood cultures
Determining whether a bloodstream infection exists is critical to the wellbeing of patients and the financial health of hospitals.
A blood culture test is the gold standard for identifying bacteremia.
Each year, millions of blood culture tests inform patient care decisions in the U.S. The majority will find no infection.1 But, of the cultures that test positive, almost 1/3 are false-positive results.
When blood cultures test positive—whether true or false—immediate action is taken to treat the patient with antibiotic therapy.
Roughly 20% of the microbes present in skin reside deep in the dermis layer and may be drawn into blood samples.2 Without a way to avoid these microbes, hospitals have accepted high rates of seemingly unavoidable false positives.
