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Wed, 08/15/2007 - 07:59

Carole Fuseck

Blood Cultures from PICC

I am looking for information regarding blood culture draws from PICC lines.Â Specifically:Â I thought the initial draw was used for the culture -- no waste of 5 or 10ml.Â Also does it matter if aerobic or anerobic is drawn first or put into one vial before the other?Â I have seen it both ways.Â I also think the staff should flush the PICC line with the 20ml before they put the specimen into the vials, not after, due to possibly clotting off the line.Â Thanks for any assistance.

Carole

Fri, 08/17/2007 - 18:19

rivka livni

In our institusion blood

In our institusion blood cultures from PICC can be done only during insertions by the PICC nurse, (one set of culture from the stick, second set from the newly inserted PICC.

After the PICC was used, we do not allow blood culture from the line, because after the hub has been accessed it is considered "contaminated" and the results would be hard to interpet.

Anerobic should be the second bottle to be punctured, because supposedly the "air" that was in the syringe has "emptied" into the first aerobic bottle.

Sun, 08/19/2007 - 02:14

Nadine Nakazawa

Blood cultures should not be

Blood cultures should not be drawn from a catheter lumen unless absolutely necessary. The clinical question is: Is the patient septic? The best results will be a full set of blood cultures: 2 separate peripheral sticks, for a total of 4 bottles. Most hospitals do non-qualifitative blood cultures and as Rivka said above, there is more likely to be contamination of the catheter hub.

With regards to the question about flushing which bottle to put the 1st 10 mls of blood into: aerobic or anaerobic: It doesn't matter. If the catheter is the source of infectionm it is shedding a lot of bacteria from the biofilm with every millimeter of blood that is drawn from the catheter. If you are using the catheter as access to see if patient is bacteremic, it stil doesn't matter whether you flush first or not, nor whether you put the blood in the aerobic or anaerobic bottle first.

Nadine Nakazawa, RN, BS, VA-BC

Tue, 08/21/2007 - 12:32

Carole Fuseck

Thanks for your

Thanks for your comments.

When you draw from the line, do you connect to the cap or directly onto the catheter hub? If cap, do you change the cap before drawing? Does anyone change the needle between bottles?

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