Evaluation Of Hemodialysis Catheter Infection in Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Despite the significant importance of central venous catheter infections and the involvement of the blood system resulting from it in the mortality and prognosis of hemodialysis patients, a specific study on the rate of this type of infection in the years related to the Covid-19 pandemic and before it has not been done at the Imam Reza Teaching Hospital in Tabriz. Therefore, this study was conducted with the aim of comparing the rate of blood infection caused by hemodialysis catheter infection in the educational and therapeutic center of Imam Reza Hospital (AS) during the March 2019 to March 2021. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, patients requiring dialysis who were admitted to the educational and therapeutic center of Imam Reza Hospital (AS) during the years 2018 to 2019 with the diagnosis of catheter infection in the nephrology department of this hospital were investigated. The rate of blood infections caused by catheters in each year was calculated using the number of infection cases and the duration of hemodialysis catheter use and compared between three years. Results: The average age of the examined patients in this study was 65.14 (±6.96) years and 123 (52.78%) of them were male and 110 (47.22%) were female. The rate of blood infection caused by catheter in 2019 to 2021 was 6.06, 3.78 and 4.97 per thousand days of catheter use, respectively. The results of the ANOVA test indicated a significant difference between the years 2019 and 2020. In the Tukey post-hoc analysis, it was found that the difference in the rate of catheter infection in 2019 and 2020 was significant (p-value = 0.009), but between the rate of catheter infection in 2021 and the rate of catheter infection in 2019 (p-value 0.266) =) and 1399 (p-value = 0.278) no significant difference was found.