The Clinical Impact of Cobas® Eplex Blood Culture Panels for the Diagnosis of Bacteremia and Fungemia

A quality improvement study on the diagnostics and clinical management of bloodstream infection episodes. Patients of all ages and genders with positive blood cultures collected for standard patient care are included in the study. In the intervention group of patients, positive blood cultures will be analysed with the cobas® eplex (Roche) blood culture panels in addition to conventional, standard-of-care (SOC) culture methods. The control group will include patients with positive blood cultures analysed using conventional, standard-of-care (SOC) culture methods. The study aims to determine the effect of rapid molecular testing using the cobas® eplex blood culture panels (Roche) in the clinical management of bloodstream infections and more specifically the effect of the eplex result on the time to most effective/targeted antibiotic treatment. The primary objective is to investigate the difference in time to most effective antibiotic treatment between the control and intervention group. The secondary aims are to analyze the concordance of results and compare the user-friendliness, hands-on time and turnaround times of the eplex to the SOC culture methods as well as to compare the difference in the length of stay, antibiotic intensity score at 96h after Gram staining and patient outcome (30-day, all cause mortality and 30-day readmission) in the control and intervention group.