"This type of improvement has never been demonstrated, but there is no reason that ICU's across the country can't implement these interventions to achieve similar results," said Sean Berenholtz, M.D., M.H.S., assistant professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine and of surgery at Johns Hopkins and lead author of the study published in the October issue of Critical Care Medicine.

The simple interventions, which include a system for educating nurses and doctors about infection control, streamlining the catheter insertion process, and a safety checklist, are believed to have prevented over 40 infections, eight deaths and saved nearly $2 million in additional health care costs during the four-year study at Johns Hopkins, says Berenholtz.

Patients in ICUs have an increased risk of bloodstream infections because nearly half of them require catheters - tubular medical devices usually inserted into a blood vessel -- for delivering fluids and medications during treatment, according to Berenholtz.

The ICU researchers partnered with hospital epidemiologists to study catheter-related infection rates from 1998 through 2002 at two Johns Hopkins ICUs that care for adult patients undergoing general, cardiac, transplant, trauma, vascular and orthopedic surgery. Rates were calculated based on the number of infections per 1,000 catheter days, defined as the number of patients with a catheter for one day. One ICU served as a control where patients received standard care. In the other ICU, they implemented a series of interventions that included educating ICU staff on the prevalence and prevention of catheter-related infections, creating a catheter insertion car
'"/>

Contact: Trent Stockton
tstockt1@jhmi.edu
410-955-8665
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
30-Nov-2004