Abdelaziz RB, et al. - Physicians designed this study to identify the types and incidences of peripheral venous catheterization (PVC) complications in children and their predisposing factors in a developing country. In their pediatric departments, PVC complications were frequent and often correlated with misuse of the device. Regarding the need for rationalization of the use of PVC and better adherence to the recommendations for the use of each drug and each administration method, these outcomes could engender awareness among both doctors and nurses.

Methods

• A prospective observational multicenter study was conducted in 5 pediatric and pediatric surgery departments over a period of 2 months.
• The physicians performed 215 PVC procedures in 98 children.
• They noted the times of insertion and removal and the reasons for termination and calculated the lifespan.
• They expressed descriptive data as percentages, means, standard deviations, medians and interquartile ranges.
• They used the Chi2 test or the Fisher test, with hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals (CI₉₅%), as well as Student’s t test or the Mann-Whitney U test to compare categorical and quantitative variables, respectively, in groups with and without complications.
• To determine correlations between the lifespan and the quantitative variables, the Spearman test was used.
• To test for differences in the median lifespan within 3 or more subgroups of a variable, the Kruskal Wallis test was used.
• For multivariate analysis, they used linear regression and logistic binary regression.
• For this study, a p-value < 0.05 was considered significant.

Results

• In this study, the mean lifespan was 68.82 ± 35.71 h.
• A total of 111 PIVC (51.9%) cases had a local complication.
• A small catheter gauge (24-gauge) (p=0.023), the use of a volume-controlled burette (p=0.036), a longer duration of intravenous therapy (p < 0.001), a medical diagnosis of respiratory or infectious disease (p=0.047), the use of antibiotics (p=0.005), including cefotaxime (p=0.024) and vancomycin (p=0.031), and the use of proton pump inhibitors (p=0.004) were identified as the risk factors.
• Reduced lifespan of the catheters was observed with the occurrence of a complication (p < 0.001), including the use of 24-gauge catheters (p=0.001), the use of an electronic pump or syringe(p=0.036) and a higher rank of the intravenous device in each patient (p=0.010).