Roughly 1/3 of all Positive Blood Cultures are FALSE Positive Blood Cultures
Research suggests that approximately 90% of all blood culture tests have negative results.1 That means that for every 1000 blood draws, about 100 patients receive a positive result. But, well-established false positive blood culture rates2 tell us that roughly 30 of the patients who test positive do NOT have a bloodstream infection.
False positive blood culture results are common.
Positive blood culture results are WRONG ≈30% of the time.
