PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of a silver-alloy hydrogel catheter on symptomatic catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs).
DESIGN: Multicenter before-after non-randomized cohort study.
SUBJECTS AND SETTING: Seven acute care hospitals ranging in size from 124 to 607 beds participated in this study. The study population included adult patients with a positive urine culture 2 or more days after admission, who underwent Foley catheterization.
METHODS: Catheter-associated urinary tract infection surveillance was conducted at each hospital for at least 3 months during the use of a standard catheter and 3 months during the use of the silver-alloy hydrogel catheter. Both the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) surveillance and a clinical definition of CAUTI were used for rate calculation.
RESULTS: A 47% relative reduction in the CAUTI rate was observed with the silver-alloy hydrogel catheter compared to the standard catheter when both infection definitions were used (0.945/1000 patient days vs 0.498/1000 patient days) (odds ratio = 0.53; P < .0001; 95% CI: 0.45-0.62). When only NHSN-defined CAUTIs were considered, a 58% relative reduction occurred in the silver-alloy hydrogel period (0.60/1000 patient days vs 0.25/1000 patient days) (odds ratio = 0.42; P < .0001; 95% CI: 0.34-0.53). Antimicrobial days for CAUTIs decreased from 1165 (standard catheter period) to 406 (silver-alloy hydrogel period).
CONCLUSIONS: Use of a silver-alloy hydrogel urinary catheter reduced symptomatic CAUTI occurrences as defined by both NHSN and clinical criteria.This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivitives 3.0 License, where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially.
Written by:
Lederer JW, Jarvis WR, Thomas L, Ritter J. Are you the author?
Clinical Improvement at Novant Health, Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Jason and Jarvis Associates, LLC, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina; C. R. Bard. Inc., Bard Medical Division, Covington, Georgia; C. R. Bard, Inc, Bard Medical Division, Covington, Georgia.
Reference: J Wound Ostomy Continence Nurs. 2014 Jun 11. Epub ahead of print.
doi: 10.1097/WON.0000000000000056
PubMed Abstract
PMID: 24922561
