Tsuchiya A, et al. - In order to determine the benefit of taking intra-abdominal cultures during source control procedures in complicated intra-abdominal infection (CIAI) patients, researchers identified adult patients with CIAI who had undergone source control procedures on the first day of admission to hospital between April 2014 and March 2016 from the Japanese Diagnosis Procedure Combination database and compared in-hospital mortality between patients who did and those who did not have intra-abdominal cultures taken. From 16,303 of 41 495 included patients, intra-abdominal cultures were taken. Outcomes suggest that in-hospital mortality could be reduced via undertaking intra-abdominal cultures during source control procedures, especially in patients with lower intestinal perforation, biliary tract infection/perforation, or healthcare-associated or high-risk community-acquired CIAI.