TOTALLY IMPLANTED VENOUS ACCESS - METHOD AND RESULTS OF INFECTION SURVEILLANCE

To evaluate the quality of care during the insertion and the maintenan ce of the implanted subcutaneous ports, an epidemiological surveillanc e has been set up in all wards of a university hospital. The methodolo gy of surveillance is based on two database files : the nosocomial bac teriemia file and the file of surgical operations consisting in the im plantation of subcutaneous ports. 140 ports were inserted (13110 port days) and the frequency of the infection was 4.3 %, namely 0.46 case f or 1000 port days. The proposed methodology seemed reliable, but heavy in cost of work. The denominator constituted by the number of ports i mplanted is easy to obtain but in a routine maintenance, it is difficu lt to get the number of port days. The severity of these infections an d the importance of the quality of care for taking charge of these dev ices incite to carry on a minimum epidemiological surveillance and to spread information about the goad practices to comply with.