Bedridden patients cleaned with wet wipes had reduced incidence of catheter-associated UTI

September 23, 2023

1 min read

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Disclosures:
The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.

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Key takeaways:

• Researchers used moistened wipes instead of soap and water to clean patients bedridden with catheters.
• Patients cleaned with the wipes had a lower incident of catheter-associated UTI.

Using wet wipes to clean bedridden patients with catheters resulted in fewer catheter-associated UTIs, researchers in Spain reported.

“In the critical care unit of cardiac surgery, the compliance with the inpatient hygiene protocol was very low,” Irma Casas, PhD, preventative medicine researchers at the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute, told Healio.

Castella L, et al. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol. 2023;doi:10.1017/ice.2023.178.

“We saw that despite being a patient with few days of hospitalization, they had a significantly higher rate of bacteriuria or catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) than other units,” Casas said.

Casas and colleagues conducted an open-label, randomized controlled trial at the Germans Trias i Pujol University Hospital in Barcelona, Spain, between January 2019 and February 2020.

Patients undergoing cardiac surgery who were bedridden and had an indwelling urinary catheter were included in the study and randomly assigned 1:1. Patients in the control group received conventional patient hygiene with water and soap, whereas those in the experimental group received dry hygiene with wipes. Casas explained that the wipes used were moistened Prontosan wipes that have decontaminating properties but not in an antiseptic capacity.

In total, 170 patients were included in the analysis — 85 in each group. Overall, the study showed that CAUTI was significantly more frequent in the control group (16.5%; 95% CI, 9.7%-25.5% vs. 5.9%; 95% CI, 2.2%-12.5%). In the multivariable analysis, the researchers determined that CAUTI was independently associated with conventional hygiene (OR = 4.1; 95% CI, 1.3-12.7).

Among the 19 patients with CAUTI, the study showed that most (60%) had an enterobacterial infection, although polymicrobial cultures were reported (20%) and were more frequent among patients who received conventional hygiene (75%).

They also found that most patients (94.1%) “maintained skin integrity,” and more patients who received conventional hygiene vs. dry hygiene (7.1% vs. 3.5%) developed moisture-induced skin lesions.

“Investment in prevention measures is costly, but efficient if the impact on the patient and the health care system is taken into account,” Casas concluded.

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