Updated guidelines for the insertion and maintenance of IV catheters emphasize the need for more clinician training, barrier protection, skin preparation and other strategies aimed at preventing catheter-related bloodstream infections.

The newly released "Guidelines for the Prevention of Intravascular Catheter-Related Infections, 2011" from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee and more than a dozen other professional organizations is the first update on this topic in 8 years. The more than 80-page document, available as a PDF download on the CDC/HICPAC website, covers education and training, hand hygiene, barrier protection, skin preparation, products and techniques related to the insertion and maintenance of peripheral, midline and central venous IV catheters.

"Catheter-related bloodstream infections — like many infections in health care — are now seen as largely preventable," says lead author Naomi O'Grady, MD, of the NIH Clinical Center Critical Care Medicine Department. "Implementation of these critical infection control guidelines is an important benchmark of healthcare quality and patient safety."

The guidelines will also be published in a special upcoming issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, which will feature a video roundtable with healthcare professionals giving their perspectives on the impact of the new guideline on infection prevention practices.

"The updated CDC guidelines are rich with new recommendations that are based on additional scientific research that has emerged since the prior version was published," says APIC President Russell N. Olmsted, MPH, CIC, calling the document "an important resource to support efforts toward the elimination of catheter-related bloodstream infections."

For more on IV insertion strategies and safety, see Outpatient Surgery's new Manager's Guide to Medication Management and Delivery, which comes out this week.

Irene Tsikitas