The clinical value of time to positive of blood culture as indicator for neonatal sepsis / 中国新生儿科杂志

ABSTRACT

Objectives:To study the clinical significance of time to positive (TTP) of blood culture for neonatal sepsis.Methods:From August 2016 to June 2019, a retrospective study was conducted in patients with positive blood cultures admitted to the Neonatology Department of our hospital. The patients were assigned into different groups according to the species of pathogen, types of neonatal sepsis and the samples contaminated or not. TTP of different groups were analyzed.Results:A total of 307 cases with positive blood cultures were identified from 10 035 cases with blood culture specimens. Among the 307 cases, 162 were contaminated (the contaminated group) and 145 (1.4%) were diagnosed of neonatal sepsis (the pathogenic group). The proportion of TTP <24 h, 24~<48 h, 48~<72 h and ≥72 h in the 145 sepsis cases were 90.3% (131/145), 7.6% (11/145), 1.4% (2/145) and 0.7% (1/145), respectively. The median TTP was 9.0 h in early-onset sepsis (EOS) group and 11.5 h in late-onset sepsis (LOS) group. The median TTP of the contaminated group was 24.5 (19.9, 30.5)h, which was longer than 11.1 (8.1,16.2)h of the pathogenic group ( P<0.05). The median TTP of Gram (+) group was 14.0 (9.4,18.8)h, which was longer than 9.6 (7.5,11.3)h of Gram (-) group ( P<0.05). The median TTP of fungi group was 32.5 (25.5, 39.0) h, which was longer than 10.6 (8.1, 15.5)h of bacteria group ( P<0.05). Conclusions:Different pathogens has different TTP for neonatal sepsis. If blood culture maintains negative for more than 72 h, empiric use of antibiotics may be discontinued for patients of suspected sepsis without specific clinical manifestations or other lab results.