Blood Diversion/Culture Contamination

Blood culture contamination continues to be a serious problem in clinical laboratories, contributing to increased cost of hospital care and patient exposure to unnecessary antibiotics that may lead to antibiotic resistance. Blood diversion - the practice of discarding or excluding the first part of a venipuncture collection for blood culture - is increasingly being adopted by health systems to systematically address (and lower) blood culture contamination rates. In this presentation, Dr. Brad Karon and Michele Legried will address the evidence behind blood diversion as a mechanism to lower blood culture contamination rates and discuss the experience at Mayo Clinic's Rochester campus with a pilot of one blood diversion device.