Intravenous access is an essential part of successful therapy and comfort of hospital patients, nursing home residents and homebound patients. About 4% of homebound patients and over 100,000 nursing home residents require indwelling Foley Catheters. While catheters play an important part in medicine, their use is accompanied by the risk of catheter-associated infections (CAI). CAI is caused by pathogens adhering to the catheter surface, proliferating and producing a biofilm. In this program, Compact Membrane Systems (CMS) will develop a family of novel catheters containing non-leaching biocides. In Phase I CMS will demonstrate that these novel catheters are superior to existing catheters in their ability to reduce CAI and do not either leach into the body or cause immune complex activation. Specific tasks to demonstrate feasibility include fabrication of the novel catheters, demonstration of non-leaching catheter, in vitro and in vivo bactericidal activity, and preliminary engineering evaluation. Phase I feasibility will be demonstrated by showing superior performance to existing state of the art catheters and controls that do not contain the non-leaching biocide. Phase I focus will be on central venous catheters with peritoneal dialysis catheters being evaluated at a later time.
Development of non-leaching biocidal catheter will provide value in numerous catheter applications by avoiding infections. Applications include central venous catheters and peritoneal dialysis catheters. Catheter infection can be potentially life threatening and costly.
