Prevention of catheter associated urinary tract infections
Report
|Updated
A rapid summary of evidence supporting interventions to prevent urinary catheter associated infections.
Key message
Background
A national patient safety campaign, planned to start in 2011, is being prepared. To support decisions regarding interventions, we have performed a rapid summary of evidence supporting interventions to prevent urinary catheter associated infections.
Commission
The summary was performed on commission of The Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services, The secretary of the patient safety campaign 2011.
Main conclusions (graded body of evidence)
- Quality improvement interventions may reduce the number of catheter associated urinary tract infections (evidence level very low and low quality).
- Removal of urinary catheters as soon as possible after surgery may reduce the number of urinary tract infections (evidence level low quality).
- When inserting or removing urinary catheters there is no conclusive evidence regarding the use of sterile technique compared to clean technique. American guidelines recommend health workers in hospital or acute settings to use sterile technique.
- There is insufficient evidence to judge if the use of bladder scanning may influence the number of catheter associated urinary tract infections.
- Short term intermittent and short term supra pubic catheters may reduce the number of urinary tract infections (evidence level low quality). American guidelines recommend that intermittent catheters may be considered for selected patient groups. However, supra-pubic catheters should only be used when urethral catheters are contra indicated.
- When considering long term catheter usage there is insufficient evidence to judge if the use of intermittent catheters reduces the number of catheter associated urinary tract infections. The patient’s needs and wishes should be decisive for choice of method.
The conclusions were based on evidence summarised in a new American guideline, five Cochrane reviews, can American HTA report and one Danish HTA report.