Abstract:
Approximately one third of the ICU patients have indwelling arterial catheters (IACs), mainly used for continuous blood pressure monitoring, blood sampling for laboratory analysis and arterial blood gas monitoring ([1]). IAC use increased during the COVID-19 pandemic due to increased need for arterial blood gas measurement in monitoring respiratory status. During the pandemic we observed a substantially higher rate of positive blood cultures with coagulase negative staphylococci (CoNS) in ICU patients. CoNS are skin microbiota, and blood cultures growing CoNS are often used as benchmark for quality of blood culture sampling ([2]). To investigate this clinical observation, we performed a case-control study.”
Reference:Erlangga Yusuf, Jubi E. de Haan, Johannes P.C. van den Akker, Marius Vogel, Jurriaan E.M. de Steenwinkel, Bart J.A. Rijnders, Lonneke G.M. Bode. Increased Number of Positive Coagulase Negative Staphylococci in Blood Cultures is Partly Explained by Increased Use of Intra Arterial Catheters in COVID-19 Patients. Journal of Hospital Infection. Published:July 02, 2021. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhin.2021.06.008.