Bacteraemia in surgical patients with intravenous devices: a European multicentre incidence study. The European Working Party on Control of Hospital Infections.

A survey of the incidence of bacteraemia and the use of intravenous (IV) devices among 10,616 surgical patients was performed in 42 hospitals in eight countries. It was found that 63 per cent of the patients surveyed had an IV device inserted at some time during their hospital stay, with national variations between 40 and 99 per cent. The incidence of device-related thrombophlebitis was 10.3 per cent, with national variations between 7.8 and 28.4. Among the surgical patients not given IV therapy, 1.5/1000 had a bacteraemia, 0.5/1000 of them hospital-acquired. The corresponding figures for patients with a peripheral but no central IV device were 6.9 and 3.7, and for patients with a central venous catheter (CVC) 59.0 and 44.8, respectively. Even though there was a strong correlation between the incidence of bacteraemia and certain diagnoses there was also an independent correlation between it and CVCs or peripheral IV lines. No correlation was demonstrated between the number of catheter days per site for patients with a peripheral IV device, and hospital-acquired bacteraemia. This may be due to the low mean number of catheter days per site that was observed. There was a large and not easily explained national variation in the incidence of bacteraemia in patients with CVCs of between 16 and 108/1000.