Blood culture is essential for the accurate diagnosis of blood stream infections and the proper treatment of patients. When blood spectrum infections are suspected in adult patients, blood should be collected twice or thrice per episode within a 24-hour period [1]. In addition, several protocols advise the usage of paired aerobic and anaerobic blood culture bottles for adults routinely.

However, pediatric patients have a low prevalence of bacteremia caused by obligatory anaerobic bacteria and a small amount of the total blood volume [[2], [3], [4]]. The aerobic bottle has been reported to recover both aerobic and facultative anaerobic bacteria [1]. As a result, in clinical microbiology laboratories, only aerobic bottles are commonly used for pediatric patients. Anaerobic blood culture can be used in high-risk groups such as immunocompromised patients and those with intra-abdominal infections [5,6].

On the other hand, several facultative anaerobic bacteria, such as Staphylococcus aureus, In this study, we confirmed that absolute anaerobic bacteria were detected in children, although very low frequency, and that a number of anaerobic bacteria only proliferated in anaerobic culture vessels.Streptococcus species, and Enterobacterales, have been observed to be more detectable in anaerobic blood culture bottles than those in aerobic blood culture bottles [7]. Similarly, we discovered that a significant proportion of facultative anaerobic bacteria grew only in anaerobic blood culture bottles in adult patients [8].

Therefore, we sought to assess the use of anaerobic blood culture in pediatric patients by comparing the detection rate and bacterial dispersion between aerobic and anaerobic blood culture bottles.