Anyone using 2% chlorohexidene bath packs?

[nightshift82]

I work in a community hospital, Cardiac Intensive Care (mix of MICU/occ SICU and Cardiac(PCI)) rare if any trauma and no open heart. Our nurse manager who took away our packaged bag baths over a year ago due to ?cost (using basins and washcloths again). Now she would like to try the 2% chlohexidene bath packs because we have had recent >>> in our central line infections..hmmmm:confused:. She read a study that showed a significant

[nightshift82]

Thanks so much. Great information! I have the same concerns. Some of the articles were vague and did not give full disclosure of the study design but I have since gotten more information. We did have 3 over the past 6mos. 0 for the previous 3yrs. Our bathing practice had change in the past 12 mos. We were using the packaged bag baths and due to $ went back to basins and soap. I feel there is a correlation but no one is listening. The knee jerk reaction is to use CHD baths for all. I understand but wish we looked at our whole practice. Thanks again.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

i work in a community hospital, cardiac intensive care (mix of micu/occ sicu and cardiac(pci)) rare if any trauma and no open heart. our nurse manager who took away our packaged bag baths over a year ago due to ?cost (using basins and washcloths again). now she would like to try the 2% chlohexidene bath packs because we have had recent >>> in our central line infections..hmmmm:confused:. she read a study that showed a significant

i haven't done a literature search, but i can tell you that we've done two separate studies on the efficacy of clorhexadene baths in our icu. for the first one, we used a measured about of chlorhexadine in a bath basin, and used a second basin to rinse. our wound infections dropped dramatically during the study, but when the six months was up the clorhexadine went away. a couple of years later, we did another study with the clorhexadine bath packs -- once again sternal wound infections dropped precipitously while we were using the stuff, and we had no blood stream infections. after six months, we switched with micu -- they got the chlorhexadine and we got the regular packaged bath packs. suddenly we had more patients in isolation, more wound infections and more bsis.

we're starting another study next week. i can't wait!

[nightshift82]

Thanks for the information. Will be interesting to hear your results.

[meandragonbrett]

Here is an abstract that was published this month in Intensive Care Medicine that is related to this discusion.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20213074?dopt=AbstractPlus