Impact of quality improving interventions on blood culture contamination rate- A prospective observational study

Abstract

Background: Blood cultures (BC) is the gold standard for diagnosis of bacteremia but false positive blood cultures due to specimen contamination can lead to increased usage of unnecessary antibiotics and have negative impact on antimicrobial stewardship program. Overgrowth of contaminants can also obscure growth of genuine pathogens and hamper accurate diagnosis. The aim of this study is to evaluate effectiveness of Quality improving (QI) interventions to reduce the blood culture contamination rate Material and Methods: Prospective observational study, conducted at a public sector hospital, for a total duration of 6 months. A taskforce developed and implemented QI interventions to reduce blood culture contamination, and evaluated effectiveness of these interventions by comparing contamination rates prior to and after implementation of the intervention. Results: The post-intervention average contamination rate was significantly lower with the mean contamination rate of 4.7 ± 1.5% as compared to baseline BC contamination rate which was 10.6 ± 1.8% (p=0.013) Conclusion: Quality improving (QI) interventions significantly reduced the blood culture contamination rate. Keywords: Quality improvement, Interventions, Blood culture, Contamination.