Routine scrubbing reduced central line associated bloodstream infection in NICU.

Background: The main aim of this study was to estimate the effectiveness of routine scrubbing by change of the incidence of central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI).

Methods: We surveyed cultures from the NICU environment in December 2017. We found that areas close to infants harbored more bacteria. We implemented routine scrubbing to control sites with the most bacteria starting from January 2018. We retrospectively reviewed and compared the data between the pre (2017) and post (2018) intervention periods.

Results: A total of 916 infants were included; 10 CLABSI episodes were identified, 9 and 1 episodes in the pre- and postintervention periods, respectively. We found that the incidence of CLABSI decreased significantly among all admitted infants (P = .006) and also among very low birth weight infants (P = .085). The number of CLABSI cases per 1,000 central line days decreased from 1.89 in 2017 to 0.23 in 2018 (P = .018). The most common bacterial species found in the cultures established from the NICU environment were identical to the CLABSI-causing coagulase-negative Staphylococcus.

Conclusions: Routine scrubbing significantly reduced CLABSI in the NICU.