Chonnam Med J.  1996 Dec;32(2):153-160.

The Evaluation for the Contagious Risk of Epidural Catheterization through Catheter Culture

• Park CJ
• Im WM
• Jeong CY
• Yoo KY
• Chung SS
• Yoon MH

Abstract

The use of epidural analgesia for postoperative pain control has been increased. But it may cause some complications. Particularly, epidural infection is a serious complication leading to fatal result. 115 patients were included in this study. The operation was performed under general or epidural anesthesia. All patients received continuous epidural infusion for analgesia. Epidural catheter was kept for 50 hours. After discontinuation of infusion, the catheter was removed and divided into 3 parts. All of them were cultured. The results were as follows: 1. After culture, 27 patients (23%) showed positive response. But only 2 (1.7%), 2 (2.6%) patients were positive in epidural tip and subcutaneous tissue, respectively. 2. There were no cases appearing any clinical signs related to positive culture. 3. The most common organism was Coagulase negative staphylococci (CNS). These results indicate that it is very important to do epidural cathetrization under the aseptic and meticulous technique in order to reduce or prevent the dpidural infection even if the duration of catheterization is short.

Keyword

Epidural catheterization; Epidural infection; Postoperative pain control

MeSH Terms

Analgesia
Analgesia, Epidural
Anesthesia, Epidural
Catheterization*
Catheters*
Coagulase
Humans
Pain, Postoperative
Subcutaneous Tissue
Coagulase