A study published by team led by patient safety experts from the University of Michigan Health System and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System finds that there is catheter chaos in U.S. hospitals.
According to the study, American hospitals don't seem to have a consistent strategy for preventing catheter-related urinary tract infection (UTIs). In fact, the study shows, most hospitals aren't using basic tactics that have been proven to keep patients from getting catheter-related UTIs in the first place.
The study, published in the January issue of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, says nearly half of hospitals lack a system that tells them which patients currently have a catheter. And three-quarters lack a system that can tell them how long a patient has had a catheter or whether one has been removed. Nearly one-third of hospitals didn't even track the UTI rates in their patient populations.
Meanwhile, fewer than 10 percent of hospitals used an approach that has been shown to reduce UTI rates and decrease the time patients spend on catheters: a simple reminder that asks doctors every day whether a patient's catheter is necessary, or even makes catheter removal the default action unless a physician says otherwise.
Why is this important? UTIs are the most common hospital-acquired infection, responsible for 40 percent of infections related to hospitalization. One in four Americans in the hospital right now has a urinary catheter. One percent of them will get a urinary tract infection from that catheter. All of those will require antibiotics. A few may suffer life-threatening complications.
The study’s authors say, patients should not be afraid to speak up about catheters that might have been put in place when they had surgery or an emergency, were treated for a bladder obstruction, or needed close monitoring of their urine output.
Previous studies have shown that up to a third of the days that patients use catheters are medically unnecessary, and that doctors don't know whether their hospitalized patients have catheters about a third of the time.
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