Guidelines for the prevention of intravascular catheter-related infections: recommendations relevant to interventional radiology for venous catheter placement and maintenance.

a g i m ( f p s r e p INTRODUCTION In the United States, 80,000 catheter-related bloodstream infections (CRBSIs) occur in intensive care units (ICUs) each year (1), and a total of 250,000 cases of CRBSIs have been estimated to occur annually if entire hospitals are assessed (2). In the ICU, these infections independently increase hospital costs and length of stay (3), but have not generally been shown to independently increase mortality. The second edition of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Guidelines for the Prevention of Intravascular Catheter-related Infections was published on August 9, 2002, in the Reports and Recommendations series of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (4), and replaced the original guideline published in 1996. The goal was to provide evidencebased recommendations for preventing catheter-related infections. Selected recommendations from the 2002 guideline relevant to interventional radiology were excerpted as a Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) guideline published in the Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology in 2003 (5,6). Major areas of emphasis in the 2002 CDC Guidelines included (i) educating and training health care providers who insert and maintain catheters, (ii) using maximum sterile barrier (MSB) precautions during central venous catheter (CVC) insertion, (iii) using a 2% chlorhexidine preparation for skin antisepsis, (iv) avoiding routine replacement of CVCs