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Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Case Reports
Blood cultures in adult patients released from an urban emergency department: a 15-month experience.
To determine the frequency of positive blood cultures obtained from adult patients with potential occult bacteremia released from an urban ED and how often these positive cultures alter the subsequent patient course or management. ⋯ The prevalence of bacteremia was 1.8% among the released patients who had blood cultures obtained in the ED. Furthermore, only 0.52% of the patients had positive blood cultures that potentially affected their medical management. Further study is warranted to identify specific criteria for selecting ambulatory patients for whom the use of blood cultures may be cost-effective.