Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infections

Urinary tract infection (UTI) is a collective term used to describe infections affecting any part of the urinary tract, ureters, urethra, kidneys, and the urinary bladder. The kidneys and the ureters comprise the upper urinary tract while the urethra and the urinary bladder comprises the lower tract (Tan & Chlebicki, 2016). Adult women are more likely to develop UTIs than adult men. In fact, urinary tract infections affect women about 30 more times than men (Tan & Chlebicki, 2016). The reason behind this has been attributed to the fact that the main pathogen causing UTIs, Escherichia coli (Tandogdu & Wagenlehner, 2016) is contained as normal flora in the skin surrounding the anus and the distance between the anus and the urinary tract in women is short. This allows easy passage of the bacteria into the urinary tract.Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infections

According to the centers for disease control and prevention, UTIs ranks among the highest number of reported healthcare-associated infections. UTIs can be primary or secondary occurring from the underlying disease, and they can also be acquired in the hospital, about 75 percent of hospital-acquired urinary tract infections are associated with a urinary catheter (Centers for disease control and prevention, 2017). It is one of the most common infections acquired by patients in the hospital, a biofilm develops in these catheters leading to bacteriuria which could subsequently lead to bacteremia, and catheter-associated urinary tract infections account for 20 percent of health-care acquired bacteremia in acute care settings and 50 percent in long-term facilities (Nicolle, 2014). These biofilms contain bacterial containing anti-microbial resistant (Soto, 2014). Indwelling catheters are known to be the most common indwelling device used in healthcare facilities accounting for about 17 percent, 23 percent, and 9 percent in medical, surgical, and rehabilitation units respectively (Nicolle, 2014). Indwelling catheters are either short term (less than 30 days) or long term (more than 30 days), acute care settings often use short term catheters, however, the longer it stays in the patient, the higher the chances of developing biofilm that could lead to bacteriuria and bacteremia which are the underlying factors in CAUTI (Nicolle, 2014;Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infections