NCT07183410

Impact of Blood Cultures Drawn From Arterial Lines on the Incidence of Contamination, Detection of Bacteremia, and Blood Culture Volume

Not yet recruiting Last updated 19 September 2025

What this trial tests

trial testing Blood culture taken from an arterial catheter in Bacteremia in 1,500 participants. Not yet recruiting.

Timeline

1 January 2026

Primary endpoint
1 January 2028

1 June 2028

Quick facts

Lead sponsor	Meir Medical Center
Status	Not yet recruiting
Study type	OBSERVATIONAL
Enrollment	1,500
Start date	1 January 2026
Primary completion	1 January 2028
Estimated completion	1 June 2028
Sites	1 location across Israel

Drugs / interventions tested

• Blood culture taken from an arterial catheter

Conditions studied

• Bacteremia — all drugs for Bacteremia →

Sponsor

Meir Medical Center

Who can join

Adults 18 to 99, any sex, with Bacteremia. Patients with the condition only — healthy volunteers not accepted.

Sponsor's own description

Taking blood cultures is an important and very common procedure in intensive care units due to the high incidence of sepsis and the need for rapid and accurate identification of bacteremia. However, despite the importance of taking a sufficient volume of blood for the purpose of identifying bacterial growth in the blood, the average blood volume in blood cultures at our institution ranges from 3.5-4 ml per bottle (where the desired volume is 10 ml). Taking an insufficient amount of blood reduces the ability of the bacteriological laboratory to detect bacterial growth and thus may lead to a delay or missed diagnosis of bacteremia, identification of the pathogen, and adjustment of appropriate treatment according to sensitivities.

In intensive care units, most patients are monitored using an arterial catheter, which allows for frequent blood tests without the need to puncture the patient. Following recently published studies that showed that there is no significant difference in the incidence of contamination when taking blood cultures from an arterial catheter compared to a peripheral vein puncture, and in order to improve our ability to identify bacteremia, it was decided to implement a new protocol in the General Intensive Care Unit that includes taking blood cultures from an arterial catheter. According to the new protocol, it was decided that when taking blood cultures from a patient with an arterial catheter, one pair of cultures should be taken from the arterial catheter and another pair from a peripheral vein puncture.

In this study, we would like to examine the contamination rate of blood cultures, the identification of true bacteremia, and the collection of appropriate blood volume and number of blood specimens taken in patients hospitalized in the General Intensive Care Unit at our institution, while analyzing differences between the period before the implementation of the new protocol and the period after the implementation, and differences between cultures taken from an arterial catheter and from a peripheral vein puncture.

Publications & conference data

No peer-reviewed publications indexed yet for this trial.