Antimicrobial lock solutions for the prevention of catheter-related infection in patients undergoing haemodialysis: study protocol for network meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials

Introduction: Catheter-related infection (CRI) is a difficult clinical problem in renal medicine, with blood stream infections occurring in up to 40% of patients with haemodialysis (HD) catheters, conferring significant rates of morbidity and mortality. Several approaches have been assessed as a means to prevent CRI. Currently, an intervention that is the source of much discussion is the use of antimicrobial lock solutions (ALS). A number of past conventional meta analyses have compared different ALS with heparin. However, there is no consensus recommendation regarding which type of ALS is best. The purpose of our study is to carry out a network meta-analysis comparing the efficacy of different ALS for prevention of CRI in patients with HD and ranking these ALS for practical consideration. Methods and analysis: We will search six electronic databases, earlier relevant meta-analyses and reference lists of included studies for randomised controlled trials (RCTs) that compared ALS for preventing episodes of CRI in patients with HD either head-to head or against control interventions using non-ALS. Study selection and data collection will be performed by two reviewers independently. The Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool will be used to assess the quality of included studies. The primary outcome of efficacy will be catheter-related bloodstream infection (CRBSI). We will perform a Bayesian network meta-analysis to compare the relative efficacy of different ALS by WinBUGS (V.1.4.3) and STATA (V.13.0). The quality of evidence will be assessed by GRADE. Ethics and dissemination: Ethical approval is not required given that this study includes no confidential personal data and no data on interventions on patients. The results of this study will be submitted to a peer review journal for publication.