Infections associated with vascular access devices in intensive care units across Australia

摘要

We categorized the policy process into different levels including policy identification, agenda settings, policy formulation, adop- tion, and evaluation. Introduction: Critically ill patients require multiple vascular access devices (VADs) and are therefore at increased risk of VAD-related infection, which can increase ICU and hospital length-of-stay, morbidity and therapy-related costs. Clinicians struggle to diagnose VAD-related infection without removing the VAD to culture the catheter tip. However, up to 91% of VADs removed on suspicion of infection are not actually infected, exposing the patient to potential complications associated with VAD re-insertion. This study determined the prevalence and economic impact of premature and unnecessary central venous catheter (CVC) and intra-arterial line (IAL) removal due to suspected infection.