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Bacterial Infection from Intravascular Monitoring Devices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

H. Bradford Hawley
Affiliation:
Infectious Diseases, Wright State University School of Medicine, Good Samaritan Hospital, Dayton, Ohio

Extract

During the past decade intravascular monitoring has become commonplace in hospital critical care areas. Early reports, such as that of Gardner et al, reassured us that these devices were safe. In fact, Gardner and associates noted not a single local or systemic infection that could be definitely related to radial artery monitoring catheters in 531 patients. Results of a more recent study by Band and Maki are more sobering. They found a 4% incidence of septicemia and an 18% incidence of local infection when they prospectively studied 130 arterial catheters in 95 patients. There were many differences between these two studies, but perhaps the two most important factors leading to the higher incidence of infection in the later study were increased duration of catheter placement and placement of the catheter by surgical cutdown or in a femoral artery.

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America 1983

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