[Guidelines for the prevention of catheter-related infections]

The revised American guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 'Guidelines for the prevention of catheter-related infections' were published on August 9, 2002. The goal of the guidelines is to promote patient safety and to decrease preventable infections by providing evidence-based recommendations for those healthcare providers who insert and maintain intravascular catheters. Since the guidelines were last issued in 1996, the science of prevention has yielded several important advances in new technology to prevent infection. In addition this update makes allowances for the fact that many new randomised controlled trials for the prevention of catheter-related infection were published in the last six years. Furthermore, several approaches, long known to be effective, need more emphasis by practitioners. The following publication summarizes the state of knowledge about the most important controversial prevention strategies and explains the recommendations.