Prospective, randomised study of selective versus routine culture of vascular catheter tips patient outcome, antibiotic use and laboratory workload》.pdf

Journal of Hospital Infection 77 (2011) 309 e315 Available online at Journal of Hospital Infection journal homepage: www.elsevier /journals/jhin Prospective, randomised study of selective versus routine culture of vascular catheter tips: patient outcome, antibiotic use and laboratory workloadq A. Pérez-Parra a, *, M. Guembe a, P. Martín-Rabadán a, P. Muñoz a, b, A. Fernández-Cruz a, E. Bouza a, b a Department of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain b Red Española de Investigación en Patología Infecciosa (REIPI), Sevilla, Spain a r t i c l e i n f o s u m m a r y Article history: In order to assess the value of vascular catheter tip culture in patients with negative blood cultures, Received 12 February 2010 all tip samples from hospitalised patients were prospectively randomised (1:1) to two different Accepted 25 November 2010 Available online 16 February 2011 routines for processing catheters: culture of all tips (routine A) vs culture only of tips from patients with concomitant bacteraemia or fungaemia (routine B). Over a nine-month period, 426 catheters Keywords: from 318 patients were randomly assigned to routine A and 429 catheters from 322 patients to Bacteraemia routine B (n ¼ 40 patients). We compared the outcome and costs from both groups. No statistically Catheter colonisation significant differences were found with respect to demographic data, mortality, hospital stay or Catheter-related bloodstream infe