The effect of antiseptic solution in central venous catheter care

Intravenous catheters have become one of the essential tools of modern medicine. Preventive measures taken while the catheter is being inserted or in place can provide a significant reduction in catheter-related infections and bacteremia/sepsis.This study aims to evaluate whether the patient's age and gender, the presence of malignancy and coexisting diseases, catheter duration, use of total parenteral nutrition solution, blood products, and antibiotics as well as antiseptics applied while attaching the central venous catheter (chlorhexidine and povidone-iodine) affect the development of catheter colonization and catheter-related bloodstream infections in patients with central venous catheters.

Our study includes 50 cases which were admitted to İzmir Atatürk Training and Research Hospital, I. Surgical Clinic, hospitalized due to various reasons between the dates of January‒December 2010 and required catheter use. Patients were randomly assigned to one of the two operating rooms, in one of which the insertion site was disinfected with Poviiodeks® (10 % povidone-iodine) while in the other, (latter) Savlosol® (15 % cetrimide, 1.5 % Chlorhexidine-gluconate, ethanol) was used.

Among many factors examined in our study, only the use of clorhexidine versus iodine povidon in skin antisepsis was found to be statistically significant in the reduction of CRBSI and CC (for CRBSI p=0.022 and for CC p=0.047).

Our study concludes that skin antisepsis is the only determining factor in the prevention of blood infection and colonization due to central venous catheter application and the use of clorhexidine vs. povidon is proven to be statistically significant (Tab. 1, Ref. 27).