Peripherally inserted central catheter-related bloodstream infections in patients with hematological malignancies: A retrospective 7-years single-center study

Objectives: We sought to investigate the nature and incidence of bloodstream infection complications and to identify the risk factors of central catheter-related bloodstream infections (CRBSI).Methods: During the study period, 291 consecutive patients with hematological malignancies who under-went PICC placement were retrospectively enrolled. We analyzed the covariates that were specified a priori for their association with CRBSI through multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression models. The asso-ciation between each predictor and the related outcome was expressed using hazard ratios (HRs) with corre-sponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs).Results: Of 391 peripherally inserted central catheter (PICCs) were inserted in 291 patients for a total of 63,714 catheter days during 7 years, with an infection rate of 0.71/1,000 catheter days. Among the patients with hematological malignancies, those with acute leukemia were prone to CRBSI. Having previous blood-stream infection (BSI) (HR 18.139; 95% CI, 8.19-40.174; P < .0001), the number of PICCs insertions (HR 4.695; 95% CI, 1.842-11.967; P = .001) (twice), (HR 6.794; 95% CI, 1.909-24.181; P = .003) (>= 3 times) were signifi-cantly associated with CRBSI. Not accompanied by chronic comorbidities (HR 0.34; 95% CI, 0.131-0.887; P = .028) and longer duration of PICC use (days) (HR 0.997; 95% CI, 0.994-0.999; P = .008) might be protective factors preventing CRBSI.Conclusions: Our finding suggests that previous BSI and a higher number of PICC insertions are associated with an increased risk of CRBSI. A lack of chronic comorbidities may help prevent CRBSI.(c) 2022 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.