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Re:Positive blood cultures
I would like to know what the time frame would be for a positive blood culture reoccurence to be considered the same episode or a different one. In other words, if a patient has E.coli on day 1 and then again when redrawn 4 days later (same strain), what is the cutoff time frame for a new "episode".
Thank you
elizabeth.jambard@nashobamed.com
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The definition of 'episode' would best be defined by a consensus from professionals in the laboratory, infection control, physicians and possibly pharmacy from your institution. If the definition of episode is based upon bacteremia resulting from the same medical condition, then blood cultures could be positive several days apart, several different times, if the bacteremia resulted from manipulation of infected tissue or repeated instrumentation resulted in repeated transient bacteremias. Bacteremia resluting from line-related infections, urinary tract or respiratory tract infections would most commonly result in bacteria entering the bloodstream at more frequent periods or even continuous bacteremia.
The ASM Cumitech 1C: Blood Cultures IV is an excellent reference that addresses many questions regarding blood cultures.
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