According to the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN), a catheter-associated UTI (CAUTI) is the most common type of healthcare-associated infection (HAI) in the US, accounting for:
- > 30% of acute care hospital infections:
- 13,000 deaths associated with UTIs each year
- Estimated 449,334 CAUTI events per year
- Each episode associated with the medical cost of $758
A total of over $340 million spent in health care is attributable to the incident of CAUTI in the U.S. each year. CAUTIs are not only a US problem. Smith (2019) attempted to quantify the health-economic burden and value of prevention of CAUTIs in England’s National Health Service (NHS). Their model estimated 52,085 CAUTIs, of which 38,084 were HAIs. CAUTIs incurred 45,717 excess bed-days and 1467 deaths. Total direct hospital costs were estimated at £54.4M.
Despite these alarming statistics, CAUTIs are highly preventable. In a survey of 900 US acute care hospitals by Saint and colleagues (2019), over 90% of respondent hospitals reported adopting certain prevention strategies such as aseptic technique during indwelling urethral catheter insertion. They found that the use of recommended practices increased in these hospitals, especially for CAUTI prevention. In May, the CDC launched the TAP strategy (Targeted Assessment for Prevention), a framework for quality improvement that uses data for action to prevent HAIs. https://www.cdc.gov/hai/prevent/tap.html
In 2010, UroToday created an information portal called “The CAUTI Challenge” to provide readers to the website the most current data, evidence-based research, and educational tools on the prevention of CAUTIs. Based on popular demand, we plan to update The CAUTI Challenge because sadly, CAUTIs remains a continuing problem in many care settings and education is a key component of CAUTI prevention.
Written by: Diane K. Newman, DNP, ANP-BC, FAAN is an Adjunct Professor of Urology in Surgery, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania and Co-Director of the Penn Center for Continence and Pelvic Health
References:
1. Saint S, Greene MT, Fowler KE, Ratz D, Patel PK, Meddings J, Krein SL. What US hospitals are currently doing to prevent common device-associated infections: results from a national survey. BMJ Qual Saf. 2019 Sep;28(9):741-749. doi: 10.1136/bmjqs-2018-009111
2. Smith DRM, Pouwels KB, Hopkins S, Naylor NR, Smieszek T, Robotham JV. Epidemiology and health-economic burden of urinary-catheter-associated infection in English NHS hospitals: a probabilistic modeling study. J Hosp Infect. 2019 Sep;103(1):44-54. doi: 10.1016/j.jhin.2019.04.010