TY - JOUR T1 - How to useā€¦ blood cultures JF - Archives of disease in childhood - Education & practice edition JO - Arch Dis Child Educ Pract Ed SP - 144 LP - 151 DO - 10.1136/archdischild-2013-305197 VL - 99 IS - 4 AU - Surjo Kiran De AU - Nandini Shetty AU - Michael Kelsey Y1 - 2014/08/01 UR - http://ep.bmj.com/content/99/4/144.abstract N2 - Positive blood culture is the gold standard for diagnosing bacteraemia and fungaemia, yet there is significant variability in aspects of performing and interpreting the test in children and neonates. Processing a blood culture can take several days, and includes use of semi-automated incubation with growth detection and a broad range of laboratory techniques such as Gram staining, phenotypic or molecular identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing on a cultured isolate. Sensitivity and specificity of a blood culture and time-to-positivity depend on a number of factors related to host/pathogen interaction, collection and transport of the specimen to the laboratory and methods employed to process the specimen. Interpretation of a positive result relies on correlation of the identity of the cultured microorganism with the clinical assessment of the child. ER -