Effectiveness of a novel bacteriaphobic coating for preventing catheter-acquired infections in man

"A quarter of all hospitalised patients receive a urinary catheter to drain their bladder during their stay. While catheters are standard-of-care therapy, these devices are also highly infectious, responsible for 40% of all Hospital Acquired Infections (HAI).

The NHS estimates that the total cost of HAI is over £1 billion a year, resulting from extra medication and days in hospital, hence catheter associated HAI are costing circa £400 million a year (up to £2,000 and 6 days per patient )..

Camstent, a UK-based SME, has developed an innovative coating material based on material research by the University of Nottingham (Nature Biotechnology, 2011). Camstent obtained CE mark in 2017 for a bacteriaphobic urinary catheter able to prevent surface colonisation by bacteria that cause HAI. It does this through a patented formulation that renders the surface inhospitable to infectious bacteria, hence stopping the formation of bacterial biofilms underlying the development of infection.

A bacteriaphobic coated catheter addresses the NHS Five Year Forward View goal of Improving Patient Safety, and specifically the goals of _Preventing healthcare acquired infections_ and _Achieving global leadership for patient safety_.

Camstent is proposing a business-led clinical investigation, to be carried out in NHS Trust hospitals and in consultation with the Oxford Academic Health Sciences network. The potential to reduce HAI has attracted participation by leading medical and surgical urologists across the UK, and our IRAS is feasible and ready for submission at four leading NHS England centres.

Under our clinical proposal, coated and uncoated (control) urinary catheters will be used in routine patient care, harvested after use, and sent for surface analysis at the University of Nottingham. Biofilm density on the catheter surfaces will be measured and correlated with the associated incidence of HAI in each group. Health and economic data will be collected to demonstrate impact on patient safety and hospital costs as compared to current practice.

Patient enrolment can begin by June 1, 2018, and conclude by the end of March, 2019\. The data set will be sufficiently large and diverse to allow statistically significant conclusions to be drawn using evidence based guidelines. NICE will carry out the economic analysis.

A positive result would lead to rapid adoption throughout the NHS as the standard for reducing HAI, a 25% reduction would annually save the NHS up to £100 million net and free up nearly 750,000 bed days."