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Michelle Todd CRNI
has everyone stopped doing tip cultures or do some infection control doctors still find this helpful in ruling out Line source

 Without baseline UA, wound colonization culture, sputum sample how do you know that an organism came from a PICC unless you do a tip culture and the organism is different than any other infectious sources. 

Michelle Todd CRNI
 Did anyone have any info to

 Did anyone have any info to help me understand how the PICC tip culture is no longer useful in pointing to the PICC as the source of fever or ruling it out?

I recently had one where the BC drawn from the PICC was the same organism as in the urine and another line where the BC  drawn from the PICC was the same as in the sputum. I assume the catheters were seeded from the other sources. But, the peripheral BC was negative so does that mean that perhaps the PICC had become contaminated from the outside from gloved hands that touched other areas? Or maybe we can't prove one way or the other. 

Michelle Todd, CRNI--Head PICC Nurse, Vibra Specialty Hospital of Portland [email protected]

lynncrni
Culturing only the catheter

Culturing only the catheter tip will tell you if the outer wall is contaminated, however with dwell times greater than a week, the likelihood of intraluminal contamination being the cause is very great. Only culturing the catheter tip by the roll plate method does not tell you anything about the intraluminal contamination. Lynn

Lynn Hadaway, M.Ed., RN, NPD-BC, CRNI

Lynn Hadaway Associates, Inc.

PO Box 10

Milner, GA 30257

Website http://www.hadawayassociates.com

Office Phone 770-358-7861

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