Major ArticlesUse of silver-hydrogel urinary catheters on the incidence of catheter-associated urinary tract infections in hospitalized patients*
Section snippets
Methods
A historical hospital-wide baseline nosocomial catheter-associated UTI rate for the University of Massachusetts Medical Center was previously established for noncoated, standard urinary catheters in January 1996 and January 1997. Patient-days of all hospitalized patients were used as the denominator. The medical center began using the silver-hydrogel catheters (Bardex IC Foley catheter; Bard, Covington, Ga) in October 1997. Surveillance for nosocomial catheter-associated UTIs was performed
Results
The University of Massachusetts Medical Center is a 375-bed hospital, with about 18% of its beds in intensive care units. It is a tertiary, teaching center. It has medical, surgical, burn, trauma, bone marrow transplant, and pediatric intensive care units. The rates of catheter-associated UTIs for the baseline and evaluation periods are shown in Table 1.
Discussion
When compared with a historical control, the use of silver-hydrogel urinary catheters resulted in a 45% reduction in the incidence of catheter-associated UTIs. The reduction did not reach statistical significance. The cost-analysis showed a cost-saving of $142,314.72 when the average cost of a UTI at this institution was used but only $12,563.52 when the median cost was used. This lower estimation of cost-saving is in keeping with the lower-cost-saving estimate of $14,456 (range, $14,456 to
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Zita Melvin, Anita Kelley, and Suzanne Hedstrom for data collection.
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Reprint requests: Kwan Kew Lai, DMD, MD, UMass Memorial Medical Center, 55 Lake Avenue North, Worcester, MA 01655.