BACKGROUND: To effectively treat sepsis and urinary tract infection (UTI), blood and urine cultures should be used appropriately and relative to incidences of bacteremia and bacteriuria. This study aimed to investigate the use of blood and urine cultures and incidences of bacteremia and bacteriuria in a hospital in Thailand.
MATERIAL AND METHODS: Medical records of patients admitted from 2016 to 2018 were randomly selected and data in the records were anonymously extracted for investigation.
RESULTS: From 12 000 records, data on blood and urine cultures were extracted from 9% and 4% of them, respectively. The negative rate of blood culture was 87.48%. Bacteremia was detected in 10.22%. The positive rate of urine culture was 27.38% and the contamination rate was 31.26%. Escherichia coli was the most common cause of community-onset bacteremia and bacteriuria. Methicillin-resistant coagulase-negative staphylococci and Acinetobacter baumannii were the most common cause of hospital-acquired bacteremia while yeasts were the most common cause of hospital-acquired UTI.
CONCLUSIONS: A high negative rate of blood culture may result not only from its low sensitivity but also from liberal test use to identify sepsis in some conditions. Improper urine collection is the main problem with use of urine culture.

Keywords: Bacteremia, Bacteriuria, Clinical Laboratory Techniques, Sepsis