Current clinical guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC; 2011) state that peripheral intravenous catheters are to be replaced every 72-96 hr to prevent infection and phlebitis in the adult patient. It is unclear whether this practice reduces the incidence of phlebitis or other infections.
The aim of this study was to examine levels I and II evidence to determine if replacing peripheral intravenous catheters only when clinically indicated compared to every 72-96 hr increases the adult patient's risk for infection or phlebitis.
The following patient or population, intervention, comparison, outcome question was used to search the literature databases PubMed, ClinicalKey, ProQuest, Ovid SP, and CINAHL: In the adult patient requiring a peripheral vascular catheter (P), does replacing the catheter only when clinically indicated (I) compared to replacing the catheter every 72-96 hr (C) increase the occurrence of phlebitis and infection (O)? A set of specific search criteria along with critical appraisal tools was used to identify relative studies.
Four level II randomized controlled trials with no less than 155 subjects, and two level I meta-analyses reviewing a total of 13 research studies indicated that the replacement of peripheral intravenous catheters only when clinically indicated does not increase patient risk of phlebitis or infection when compared to the current practice of routine replacement between 72 and 96 hr in the adult patient population.
The current practice of replacing peripheral intravenous catheters every 72-96 hr does not decrease the incidence of phlebitis or infection when compared to replacing catheters when clinically indicated in the adult population. By translating this research into current practice, healthcare costs and nursing care time will decrease, and unnecessary invasive procedures would be eliminated thereby increasing patient safety and satisfaction.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 14 February 2019.
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#24,786,738
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Outputs from Worldviews on evidence-based nursing (Online)
#416
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Outputs of similar age
#199,809
of 300,055 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Worldviews on evidence-based nursing (Online)
#7
of 8 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,410,315 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 19th percentile – i.e., 19% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 654 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 7.3. This one is in the 27th percentile – i.e., 27% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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