Bacteremia Prediction With Prognostic Scores and a Causal Probabilistic Network - A Cohort Study of Emergency Department Patients.

Background: Physicians tend to overestimate patients' pretest probability of having bacteremia. The low yield of blood cultures and contaminants is associated with significant financial cost, as well as increased length of stay and unnecessary antibiotic treatment.

Objective: This study examined the abilities of the National Early Warning Score (NEWS), the Quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (qSOFA), the Modified Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (mSOFA), and two versions of the causal probabilistic network, SepsisFinder™ (SF) to predict bacteremia in adult emergency department (ED) patients.