Blood cultures are tests for infection in the blood, a serious condition.
Skin bacteria that get into the blood sample while it is being drawn can make it look as though patients have a blood infection when they really do not. To prevent contamination of blood cultures, it is important to disinfect the skin thoroughly before drawing blood for these tests. The cleaning solutions used most commonly for this purpose are chlorhexidine and povidone-iodine. It is not known, however, whether one solution is better at preventing contamination than the other. The researchers wanted to find out if chlorhexidine was associated with fewer contaminated blood cultures than povidone-iodine.