[The significance of air contamination for the taking of blood cultures in open systems].

The importance of the air contamination, when open blood culture systems were used, was emphasized by investigation series in 20 test persons. The proportion of contaminated cultures correlated with the opening time and the size of the opening area of the culture systems applied. The moist cleaning of the room performed before the taking of the blood culture and low numbers of patients in the rooms clearly improved the portion of contamination.