Forget skin scrubbing and other antiseptics: prevent catheter related infections using chlorhexidine plus alcohol

One of the fundamental interventions that we as clinicians perform on critically ill patients is vascular access. Fluid resuscitation, drug administration, intravascular pressure monitoring, blood gas analysis and hemodialysis are just some of the numerous interventions necessary for survival and better patient outcome. Sadly, there are risks for every well intended intervention and in vascular access the most important one is infection. Millions of patients require these catheters yearly and roughly 5% will develop a catheter-related infection (CRI); up to 35% of those who do, will subsequently succumb to that infection (1,2).