Cost comparison of four venous catheters: Short peripheral catheter, Long peripheral line, Midline, and PICC for peripheral infusion.

Introduction: The use of midline catheters for patients requiring a peripheral IV infusion is sometimes limited by their cost. Although decision trees allow them to be positioned in relation to short peripheral cannulas (SPC), Midlines, and PICCs, their economic impact has not yet been evaluated. A study was conducted to estimate and compare the actual costs of using the three types of catheters for durations of 7, 14, and 21 days.

[Realist protocol for implementing integrated care pathways in France (waiver 51 LFSS 2018)].

The paradox of real world researches supposedly conducted in real life is that they did not succeeded in freeing themselves from the techniques of the randomised trials which they pretended to escape. In the successionist perspective of classical experimental or quasi-experimental methods, the cause always precedes the effect in a linear manner, and any interference that is likely to threaten the stability of this relationship must be neutralised by mobilising the appropriate statistical techniques. In complex systems where everything moves at the same time due to multiple interrelationships that make it impossible to construct a counterfactual, these elements are no longer considered as confounding factors that need to be controlled, but as decisive factors in the smooth running of the experiment.