Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have released updated guidelines for the prevention of catheter-related bloodstream infections.

• The guidelines are aimed at health care providers who insert intravascular catheters and those who are responsible for surveillance and control of infections in the hospital, in outpatient settings, and in home health care settings.
• They focus on five major areas
  1. Educating and training health care providers.
  2. Using maximal sterile barrier precautions during central venous catheter insertion.
  3. Avoiding routine replacement of central venous catheters.
  4. Cleaning skin with chlorhexidine; avoiding routine replacement of central venous catheters.
  5. Using antiseptic/antibiotic-impregnated short-term central venous catheters and chlorhexidine-impregnated sponge dressings if infection rates are not decreasing through other strategies.
• Hospitals must track and report on central line–associated bloodstream infections in their intensive care units or risk losing 2% of their Medicare payments.
• According to Dr. Naomi O’Grady, of the NIH Clinical Center Critical Care Medicine Department Catheter-related bloodstream infections – like many infections in health care – are now seen as largely preventable
• Implementation of these critical infection control guidelines is an important benchmark of health care quality and patient safety.
• Recent data from the CDC showed that the number of central line–associated bloodstream infections occurring in ICUs across the country dropped by about 25,000 or 58% from 2001 to 2009 (MMWR 2011; 60:1-6).
• The prevention of central line–associated bloodstream infections in the ICU resulted in total savings of about $1.8 billion and as many as 27,000 lives saved between 2001 and 2009, according to the CDC.

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