• DOI:10.7326/0003-4819-95-1-32
• Corpus ID: 1940019

Pseudobacteremia attributed to contamination of povidone-iodine with Pseudomonas cepacia.

@article{Berkelman1981PseudobacteremiaAT,
  title={Pseudobacteremia attributed to contamination of povidone-iodine with Pseudomonas cepacia.},
  author={Ruth L. Berkelman and Sara Lewin and John R. Allen and R. L. Anderson and Lawrence D. Budnick and Samuel Shapiro and S M Friedman and Peter Nicholas and Robert S. Holzman and Robert W. Haley},
  journal={Annals of internal medicine},
  year={1981},
  volume={95 1},
  pages={
          32-6
        }
}

• R. Berkelman, S. Lewin, +7 authors R. Haley
• Published 1 July 1981
• Medicine, Biology
• Annals of internal medicine

Pseudomonas cepacia was recovered from the blood cultures of 52 patients in four hospitals in New York over 6 months from April through October 1980. Epidemiologic investigation in one hospital indicated that the positive results of blood culture represented pseudobacteremias and implicated a 10% povidone-iodine solution used as an antiseptic and disinfectant (Pharmadine; Sherwood Pharmaceutical Company, Mahwah, New Jersey) as the source of contamination. Physicians who drew blood cultures positive for P. cepacia were more likely to have left povidone-iodine on the skin before venipuncture (p = 0.026) and were more likely to have applied povidone-iodine to the blood culture bottle tops and to have left it there while inoculating the blood culture media (p = 0.007) than those who drew cultures negative for P. cepacia. Direct inoculation of Pharmadine into brain-heart infusion broth yielded P. cepacia; however, 2 weeks after the first cultures, the same Pharmadine bottles were culture negative. The iodine concentrations of the contaminated Pharmadine solutions were similar to those of 10% povidone-iodine solutions distributed by other manufacturers.