My dad has most all symptoms of Sepsis (blood infection) . He has had a CT, MRI, white count,blood culture, etc. The doctor ruled out stroke and now wants to do a spinal tap tomorrow to see if maybe he has a blood infetion. All the test I listed are among the list of test to determine, so why hasn’t it shown up yet?
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You don’t need a positive blood culture to make a diagnosis of sepsis. There are reasons why blood cultures are negative….1) If the bacterial load is small enough to be detected and 2) If the patient has been on prior antibiotics when the culture is performed.
A spinal tap is not done to detect blood infection. It is done to find out the CAUSE of the blood infection.
If you have the characteristics signs of sepsis like fever, low blood pressure (hypotension)and increased heart rate, you don’t need a blood culture to make a diagnosis of blood infection (sepsis).
The next step is usually finding the cause of the infection to tailor the antibiotics to be used.