Coatings & surface treatment


A new kind of catheter coating


Urinary catheters are an essential medical device. But there’s always a risk that bacteria could colonise, forming antibiotic-resistant biofilms – and ultimately sparking catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI). No wonder scientists at Sheffield Hallam University have been hard at work on solutions, developing antimicrobial sol-gel coatings to keep devices clean. Abi Millar talks to Dr Tim Nichol, a microbiology and biosciences lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, about the work his team is doing to address this problem.


very year, millions of hospitalised patients worldwide develop a healthcare-associated infection (HAI). While many of these infections can be treated easily, a non-negligible proportion prove to be serious or even fatal. Around 90,000 annual deaths in the EU, and 100,000 in the US, can be attributed to an HAI. A leading culprit is the urinary catheter. These are essential medical devices by anyone’s standards, required by around 20% of patients in NHS hospitals. At the same time, they’re unusually conducive to infection. According to one 2019 study,


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around 12% of US patients who have a catheter inserted for 30 days will develop an HAI. These infections can be classed as ‘catheter- associated urinary tract infections’ (CAUTI), or else the more serious ‘catheter-associated bloodstream infections’ (CABSI). While the latter is rarer, its reported mortality rate stands as high as 25%. Clearly, then, this is a huge problem for the affected patients, who may be looking at an extended hospital stay and a drop in their quality of life. It poses a burden for healthcare systems too: in the UK, CAUTI and CABSI are estimated to cost the NHS more than


Medical Device Developments / www.nsmedicaldevices.com


ivector/Shutterstock.com


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