Infection prevention
By: artzyjen (3:35 PM 08/02/2010)Wanted to share something new we are trying. My son's gastroenterologist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center said they are going to conduct a study on this soon as they've had great success thus far.
My son has a single lumen Broviac, so what we've been doing in addition to ethanol locks is to alcohol down and wrap a tegaderm around the connections into the Broviac (i.e. tpn/antibiotics/etc.) For little ones still in diapers especially, it seems that bacteria may be seeping in through those connections and causing infections.
In one case, a child who had been having nearly constant line infections has now had a year and a half of zero infections- all since wrapping the line connections with a tegaderm!
And though we've only been doing this a little over a month, he's gone a full month with no problems with the line thus far. (He's on his fifth central line due to numerous infections and had been in the hospital every month this year for various problems, except for this last month.)