Simultaneous catheter replacement and removal in refractory peritoneal dialysis infections.

The present report describes more than nine years of experience with simultaneous removal and replacement of the chronic peritoneal dialysis (PD) catheter in treating refractory mechanical and infectious complications. Simultaneous catheter replacement and removal not only succeeded in 22 of 23 cases with non-infectious mechanical complications, allowing uninterrupted PD in all but three, but also succeeded in 30 (83%) of 36 additional cases with persisting or recurring infection. Simultaneous procedures failed in six (17%) of 36 infectious cases, due to persistent infection in two cases and to procedure complications in four cases. The clinical characteristics of the 30 successful infectious cases were compared to the characteristics of both the six failures, as well as 29 additional infectious cases in which the peritoneal catheter was removed but was not replaced because of a variety of serious complications (such as pancreatitis, abscess, sepsis, or fluid overload). At the time of simultaneous catheter replacement in successful cases, temporary control of active peritoneal inflammation was achieved more frequently (80% vs. 31%, P less than 0.001) with a shorter interval of antibiotic coverage (6.4 +/- 0.9 vs. 14.7 +/- 1.3 days, P less than 0.001). In addition, the successful cases were characterized by significantly more Staphylococcal infections (70% vs. 26%, P less than 0.001) and significantly fewer Pseudomonal or fungal infections (6% vs. 59%, P less than 0.001), although successful cases included some non-Pseudomonal, non-enteric gram negative infections (23%).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)