Table 1.
Demographic data.
Table 2.
Microorganisms detected by blood culture and PCR.
Figure 1.
C-reactive protein (CRP) and procalcitonin (PCT) depending on blood culture (BC) and PCR result.
PCR−/BC−: n = 199, PCR−/BC+: n = 18, PCR+/BC−: n = 67. PCR+/BC+: n = 27. Pathogens in the blood culture in the ‘PCR− BC+’ subgroup: CoNS: 8, Candida albicans: 5, Staphylococcus aureus: 3, Enterococcus faecium: 2, Enterococcus faecalis: 1. Kruskal-Wallis for PCT: p<0.001; *: p<0.008 (Mann-Whitney test, Bonferroni correction for multiple testing). Kruskal-Wallis-Test for CRP: p = 0.01; no significant differences between groups were detected.
Figure 2.
Concordance of detected microorganism between PCR and culture based methods.
Venn diagram showing the number of microorganisms found in the PCR, the concomitant blood culture, and the microbiological specimens from the presumed site of infection. Numbers in the overlapping areas reflect microorganisms detected with more than one technique simultaneously. Most of the pathogens were not confirmed with any other technique. Unconfirmed results from the culture based methods are partly not on the PCR target list. Results where the same pathogen was detected more than once in the same specimen were removed from this diagram.
Table 3.
Microorganisms detected in microbiological samples from presumed site of infection compared to PCR.
Figure 3.
Time to positive result for PCR and blood culture (Kaplan-Meier-Curve).
Blood culture and PCR, which remain negative, have been excluded from this analysis. Median time to result was 25.2 (interquartile range: 18.2–32.2) hours for the PCR versus 189.5 (178.6–197.4) hours for the blood culture.