Definitions and Occurrence of Unused Short Peripheral Intravenous Catheters in Different Care Settings: A Scoping...

To examine the variation of the operative definition and occurrence of unused peripheral intravenous catheters in pre-hospital and hospital settings, and to describe possible predictors of this phenomenon.

A scoping review, according to Arksey and O'Malley (2005), was revised by Levac et al. (2010).

We searched Medline, PubMed, Embase, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature database, and Scopus up to 30 May 2024. Studies were included when they evaluated the unused peripheral intravenous catheters in the paediatric and adult populations in the pre-hospital setting, emergency area, and inpatient wards. The title-abstract and full-text screening were performed independently by two reviewers and the data extraction was conducted.

Twenty-five studies were included. The majority were conducted in Australia and in the emergency setting. There are three main criteria adopted to define the unused short peripheral intravenous catheter, which are 'Insertion/usage goals', 'Time criteria' and 'Patients' clinical conditions'. The prevalence varied from 8.4% to 56% across the settings. The factors affecting the risk of unused peripheral intravenous catheters are related to patients' characteristics, characteristics of peripheral intravenous catheters, and characteristics of professionals in the team. In conclusion, there is a high variability of the definition to indicate the unused peripheral intravenous catheters, of which occurrence emerged as spread on a large range. There is a need to standardise the phenomenon's definition and method of measurement, considering the predicting factors. No Patient or Public Contribution.