False Positive Peripheral Blood Culture in Children With Leukaemia: A Prevalence Study

Brief summary (registry, in English)

Chemotherapy, the main treatment for childhood leukemia, has side effects on healthy cells. One of the most important of these side effects is the risk of infection due to neutropenia. In clinics, blood culture is the gold standard for the detection of possible infection risk (bacteremia, fungemia, etc.). During the diagnosis and treatment process in children with leukemia, a large number of peripheral or catheter blood cultures are performed. When the culture results are positive, it is accepted that the infection has grown. In some cases, a positive peripheral blood culture result may not be clinically significant. An agent belonging to the skin flora of the patient or the healthcare professional taking the field culture may also cause the blood culture result to be positive. This is called contamination or false positive blood culture. Contaminated cultures may cause prolonged hospitalization, additional medical interventions, unnecessary initiation of antibiotic treatment and related antibiotic resistance, toxicity due to additional drugs and an increase in hospital costs. The peripheral blood culture contamination rate, which is accepted as a quality indicator in some countries, should be below 3%. In this context, this study aimed to determine the prevalence of false positive peripheral blood cultures by examining the peripheral blood culture results obtained during routine follow-ups from children hospitalized with leukemia in the pediatric hematology clinic. The data will be collected retrospectively covering three years before March 2024 when the ethics committee approval was obtained. Since the relevant clinic cares for approximately 25 new children diagnosed with leukemia annually, the study sample is planned as 75 cases.

What you commit to

• Study type: Observational
• Participants enrolled: 100
• From 15 Mar 2024 to the primary completion date, 1 Jun 2024
• 1 site in 1 country
• Visits and tests: ask the trial team, the registry does not list them

Built from the registry fields of ClinicalTrials.gov. It describes the study, not your situation.

Who cannot take part

Copied verbatim from ClinicalTrials.gov and grouped by topic. Only the trial team decides who can take part.

Who the study is looking for

Age in the registry: 0 years to 18 years · Sex: All · Does not accept healthy volunteers

Full criteria on ClinicalTrials.gov

Sites (1)

Sites in registry order. Pick your city on the disease page to sort them by distance.