Blood cultures for bacteria and yeast are among the most clinically important and high-volume tests performed by clinical microbiology labs. Because these cultures are so important to clinical care, we want to make sure that blood cultures are performed as quickly and accurately as possible, and that they are ordered, collected and utilized appropriately. We are going talk about two recent papers. The first is about diagnostic stewardship for improving utilization of blood cultures and the second is about reporting blood culture results more quickly. Guests: Maria Valeria Fabre, M.D., Eric Ransom, Ph.D. Some of the questions we’ll discuss include: • What steps can be taken to reduce the number of inappropriate blood cultures ordered in non-neutropenic adult patients? • Can the final results of blood cultures be reported earlier than the canonical 5 days? Links A Diagnostic Stewardship Intervention To Improve Blood Culture Use among Adult Nonneutropenic Inpatients: the DISTRIBUTE Study at https://jcm.asm.org/content/58/10/e01053-20 Evaluation of Optimal Blood Culture Incubation Time To Maximize Clinically Relevant Results from a Contemporary Blood Culture Instrument and Media System at https://jcm.asm.org/content/59/3/e02459-20 Read more at https://jcm.asm.org