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Central Line Infection Report

Decent Essays

For over a decade, healthcare associated infections (HAIs) have been at the forefront for improvement in hospitals across the nation, with central line associated blood stream infections (CLABSI) being a frontrunner of HAIs investigated as a major area for improvement. A central line can be either a central venous catheter (CVC) or a peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC) and has many uses in intensive care units, inpatient units, and home health care including administration of antibiotics, TPN, and chemotherapy treatment. Remarkable improvements over the past decade have been made in order to shrink the rate of CLABSIs with measures and ongoing research to continue to diminish the number of central line infections seen in hospitals. …show more content…

To simplify central line care, the Joint Commission released their five easy and proven interventions to keep CLABSIs at bay, essentially streamlining the IHI’s recommendations. The five interventions include: thoroughly utilizing appropriate hand hygiene, chlorhexidine skin preparation, and full barriers during insertion, avoidance when possible of utilizing the femoral approach, and a primary focus on removing unnecessary central lines. This last intervention is crucial with central lines as each day that a patient has a central line in place, the higher risk they have of developing a CLABSI. When looking at this intervention it is critical to have a team that can make daily or weekly at the minimum, line rounds to assess the line and determine if the line is still medically necessary. It is imperative that this team is able to have an open communication with the doctor in order to recommend and request the line be removed. Central line teams found in hospitals have proven to be yet another effective measure at controlling CLABSIs. However, still nothing has been effective enough to reach the zero event goal set forth. (The …show more content…

With the original aim of CLABSI prevention aimed primarily at intensive care units, this new approach sets its sights on decreasing rates in hospital patients in general acute care settings where a reported 23,000 CLABSIs occurred in 2009. These statistics guided Teleflex Inc. to create a new FDA approved PICC in 2011 with both antimicrobial along with antithrombogenic effects. A California hospital that consistently utilizes evidence-based research conducted in-house research in 2014 to test the effectiveness of the new PICC and determine if it would truly decrease infecftion rates. This testing was done using an intervention group, whom had the antimicrobial PICC inserted, and a nonintervention group, whom had the standard PICC inserted. Both groups were predominantly equal in terms of gender, race, age, and medical status and both received equal treatment using the central line intervention bundle, including scheduled dressing changes every seven days or as needed, access devices changed every Monday and Thursday, the use of an alcohol impregnated cap on all ports, and the utilization of a line team. Results were impressive with the intervention group, having a total of 260 patients with a combined 2,124 line days, encountered 1 CLABSIs which equated to an infection rate of 0.47/1000 line days. The nonintervention group on the other

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