Antibiotics-impregnated ventricular catheter versus systemic antibiotics for prevention of nosocomial CSF and non-CSF infections: a prospective randomised clinical trial

Impact of antibiotic-impregnated catheters on the timing of cerebrospinal fluid infections in non-traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage

“…The mean duration of drainage was 9.9 and 10.1 days respectively and did not vary between both groups. No ventriculostomy-related infections were noted in their series [20,21]. Similarly, our results did not find any infection prior to 9 days of drainage and more than 70% occurred after more than 14 days of drainage.…”

Does release of antimicrobial agents from impregnated external ventricular drainage catheters affect the diagnosis of ventriculitis?

“…6 In recent years, antibiotic-impregnated EVD catheters have been introduced in an attempt to reduce the risk of ventriculitis arising from catheter colonization. 10,[21][22][23] Although these new catheters have been reported to be successful in this respect, a recent study 18 raised concern that antimicrobial agents leaching from the catheters might inhibit or kill bacteria in CSF samples, thus producing falsenegative laboratory cultures and masking cases of ventriculitis, thereby interfering with or delaying treatment.…”

Impact of antibiotic- and silver-impregnated external ventricular drains on the risk of infections: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…The RCT study by Zabramski et al 23 revealed a statistically significant benefit of AI-EVD catheters. However, the remaining 2 RCTs conducted by Wong et al 19 and Pople et al 20 did not reveal any benefit. A random model was used because of moderate heterogeneity (c 2 ¼ 3.14; P ¼ .21; I 2 ¼ 36%), and a pooled analysis of these RCTs showed no significant difference between the 2 groups (RR, 0.36; 95% CI, 0.11-1.15; P ¼ .09) (Fig 5A).…”

“…Two observational studies were performed in children, 18,26 and the pooled data showed no significant difference (RR, 0.23; 95% CI, 0.03-2.08; P ¼ . 19). Five studies were conducted in children and in adult populations.…”

“…The characteristics of the included studies are summarized in Table 1 and Table 2. 16,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] Ten studies compared AI-EVD catheters with plain EVD catheters, of which 3 were RCTs. Five studies compared SI-EVD catheters with plain EVD catheters, but only 1 study was an RCT.…”