Batadine vs Chlorhexidine

Nurses General Nursing

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Specializes in geriatric, pediatric, critical care.

I'm an RN who is interested in finding out why most facility have moved away from iodine and batadine usage to chlorhexidine for IV and PICC line insertion. If anyone have evidence base research that they can shear with me regarding this I would appreciate it.

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Why not head over to PubMed and pull up the curent literature? You can find both prospective and retrospective literature on PubMed.

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Specializes in Vascular Access.

Several reasons come to mind:

1. Betadine is irritating & cytoxic.

2. Betadine does not have the residual activity, or continued killing power that Chloraprep or Chlorahexidene does.

3. Betadine is not effective in the prescence of organic material ( blood).

4. Betadine takes FOREVER to dry.

5. If you use alcohol and Betadine together, you must wait until the Alcohol is completely dry before applying the Betadine or a tincture can develop which is very irritaing to the skin.

6. Betadine stains skin.

7. CDC recommends Chlorahexadine vs. Betadine to help prevent CRBSI/CABSI.

Hope this helps!

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Specializes in CVICU.

One more negative thing I can think about betadine... a lot of people are allergic to it.

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Chloraprep goes into ALL layers of the skin and has kill power for 48 hours. This of course if used properly.

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