Automated Versus Manual Band Counts for the Diagnosis of Invasive Bacterial Infections in Infants Who Are Febrile.

We conducted a secondary analysis of a prospective study of infants ≤60 days of age who were febrile to assess the diagnostic accuracy of automated vs manual immature neutrophils for invasive bacterial infections. Although manual counts were superior compared with automated counts, bands had suboptimal accuracy overall and had significant variability in test characteristics based on methodology.