The impact of pre-hospital antibiotics on blood culture yields in a low resource setting

摘要

Background: Bacterial sepsis and severe focal infections are common admission diagnoses amongst Gambian children admitted to the Edward Francis Small Teaching Hospital (EFSTH) and the Medical Research Council (MRC) Unit, The Gambia. However, blood cultures are frequently negative. To understand the causes of the low blood culture yields we documented history of antibiotic use and measured antimicrobial activity in clean catch urine collected at the time of admission or before the start of antibiotic therapy.