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Updated: Jul 3, 2026
Evaluation of a Point-of-Care Testing Analyzer for Measuring Peripheral Blood Leukocytes
Published on: March 22, 2022
Multicenter study on blood culture quality and turnaround time of patients in intensive care unit in Guangdong
Yuan Peng1, Wanting Liu2, Hanlei Wu1
1Microbiome Medicine Center, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Zhujiang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, 510280, China; Department of Laboratory Medicine, Key Laboratory of Diagnostic Medicine (Ministry of Education), Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, 400016, China.
Purpose:
We evaluated the quality of blood culture (BC) in critically ill patients in 19 tertiary comprehensive teaching hospitals in Guangdong Province, and analyzed the factors affecting the quality.
Methods:
BC specimen data of 37,552 critically ill patients from January 1, 2021 to December 31, 2021 were screened, providing a total of 137,560 BC bottles. The quality indicators of BCs were analyzed.
Results:
The positive and submission rates of BCs in critically ill patients varied among different hospitals. Of the most common and clinically significant isolates in positive BCs, there were 10 bacterial strains (n = 5572) and 1 fungal strain (n = 617), with median turnaround times for antimicrobial susceptibility test (AST) of 2.86 (2.19-3.62) days and 3.72 (3.00-4.58) days, respectively. BC specimen collection mainly occurred between 06:00 and 24:00, with reception and loading peaking from 08:00 and 24:00. Gram-staining and AST reports were concentrated between 10:00 and 10:59, and organism identification reports were between 09:00 and 09:59.
Conclusion:
There were differences in the quality of BC in critically ill patients among different hospitals and BCs had significant delays at night during the pre-analytical stage and specimen reporting times. These indicate the need for further optimization of related workflows.
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