Background Drug incompatibilities, such as precipitates, may contribute to the clinical deterioration of paediatric patients (sepsis), especially when infusing vancomycin and piperacillin (VAN/PIP). Drug concentration and infusion sets affect the overall particulate contamination of paediatric infusion protocols. Using multilumen infusion sets could prevent these incompatibilities.

Purpose To define and assess a new way to infuse VAN/PIP during leukaemia treatment in paediatric patients, without any visible precipitate.

Material and methods Two infusion sets were studied, which differed in design and drug dead-space volume (V): 1) a standard single lumen set with 2 four-port manifolds with extension lines (ref RPB4320, Cair LGL, France; V ∼ 12 mL) and 2) a 5-lumen infusion set (ML-5) (Edelvaiss-Multiline, Doran International, France; V ∼ 1 mL). Different vancomycin concentrations (VANc) were tested to infuse VAN/PIP simultaneously without any precipitate (optimised multidrug protocol). A dynamic particle count test was performed (N = 5) over 24 h to evaluate the overall particulate contamination of our standard (VANc = 42 mg/mL) and optimised (VANc = 4 mg/mL) protocols, using both standard and ML-5. We performed a t-test.

Results No visible particles were detected on reducing VANc (4 mg/mL) instead of the standard dose (42 mg/mL). For the optimised multidrug protocol, using the ML-5 reduced the overall particulate contamination by 68%, compared to the standard infusion set (716,349 ± 89,322 vs. 251,980 ± 49,429; p = 0.002). The number of large particle sizes was significantly reduced when using the ML-5 ∼ 60% (p = 0.027) and 90% (p = 0.009) for particle sizes ≥10 and 25 µm, respectively.

Conclusion This study demonstrated the large number of particles administered during parenteral multidrug infusion. This can be minimised through the choice of the drug concentration and/or the type of infusion set. Although this kind of contamination is invisible, further studies are required to evaluate its adverse clinical impact.

References and/or acknowledgements No conflict of interest.