Preventing nosocomial bloodstream infections in children

As is the case in many areas of health care, there is less published literature on nosocomial infection prevention in children than in adults. So it is nice to see some multicenter data on central-line associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) prevention in kids. The bottom line: in 29 pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) across the U.S., implementation of bundles for line insertion and maintenance resulted in a 43% reduction in CLABSI rate (from 5.4 to 3.1 infections per 1000 central line days). One of the interesting findings from this study was that adherence to the “maintenance bundle” seemed to be more important for CLABSI prevention than did adherence to the “insertion bundle”. See here for what each bundle included.