%0 Journal Article %A Surjo Kiran De %A Nandini Shetty %A Michael Kelsey %T How to useā€¦ blood cultures %D 2014 %R 10.1136/archdischild-2013-305197 %J Archives of disease in childhood - Education & practice edition %P 144-151 %V 99 %N 4 %X 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. %U https://ep.bmj.com/content/edpract/99/4/144.full.pdf