Central Venous Catheter Replacement Strategies in Patients With Acute Burn Injury

Aim: To determine the incidence of infection with three primary schedules of central venous catheter exchange in pediatric burn patients and to create a system that will minimize infectious risk in this patient population.

Hypothesis: A strategy of routine catheter changes without guidewire exchange will result in no more infections and a decreased risk of mechanical complications over frequent guidewire exchange or frequent new-site replacement.

Background: Reviews of burned children have implied that it is safe to change CVCs on a weekly basis, either by new site insertion or by wire exchange. In non-burn populations the routine use of wire exchange may increase infectious risk. Laboratory investigations have shown that the longer catheters are in place, the more often they are colonized with bacteria; this translates to an increase in catheter infection and patient sepsis. Centers for Disease Control recommendations note that catheters should not be routinely changed. The burn literature has disagreed with this concept, proffering that the change in microbial milieu from the burn wound increases infection risk, and national data indicates that burn units have three to four times higher rates of catheter related bloodstream infections than do other intensive care units. There is a trend in the existent retrospective data that using wires to change central venous catheters increases the risk of infection: CVCs changed to a new site have an infection rate of 16.6 per 1000 catheter days, whereas those changed by means of a wire have a rate of 25.2 per 1000 catheter days.

Methods: Patients will be randomized to three intervention groups: a frequent (6 days) moving of catheters to new sites; an alternating schedule of wire exchanges and new sites (every 6 and 12 days); and a less frequent moving of catheters to new sites (12 days) without wire exchange. This project requires enough patients to show a difference between three intervention groups. A significant decrease in infection rate would be from the current 20 infections per 1000 catheter days to approximately 15 per 1000 catheter days. This would require a minimum of 1000 catheter days per group.