The Champagne Tap: Time to Pop the Cork?

Area of Science:

• Pediatric Emergency Medicine
• Clinical Diagnostics

Background:

• A

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate how varying the definition of a

Main Methods:

• Secondary analysis of a retrospective cross-sectional study.
• Infants ≤60 days of age with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) culture in the emergency department (ED).
• Primary outcomes: champagne tap defined by CSF RBC count of 0 cells/mm³ (with or without WBCs) vs. both CSF RBC and WBC counts of 0 cells/mm³.

Main Results:

• 86.2% of 23,618 encounters had both CSF RBC and WBC counts.
• 13.3% had a CSF RBC count of 0 cells/mm³.
• 1.6% had both CSF RBC and WBC counts of 0 cells/mm³ (8.35 times less frequent than RBC count of 0).

Conclusions:

• A lumbar puncture with zero CSF RBCs is 8x more frequent than one with zero RBCs and WBCs.
• A broader definition of