Prospective, randomized controlled comparison of a flash-tip catheter and a traditional intravenous catheter in an urban emergency department

Introduction: Safe and efficient intravenous access is paramount to the practice of emergency medicine. We compared the first-stick success rates and blood spillage of two peripheral intravenous catheters in a busy urban emergency department.Methods: In this randomized controlled trial, we assigned emergency department patients requiring peripheral intravenous access to use of either a flash-tip catheter (SurFlash Plus, Terumo Medical Corporation, Somerset, New Jersey) or a widely used control catheter (Insyte Autoguard; Becton, Dickinson and Company, Franklin Lakes, New Jersey). We compared frequency of first-stick success and blood contamination between catheters using chi-squared analysis.Results: We enrolled 600 patients, randomizing 309 to the flash-tip catheter and 291 to the control catheter. The first-stick success rate of each device was 79%. Blood contamination, defined as spillage of blood on the patient’s skin, bedding, or the inserter, occurred in 8 of 309 cases (2.6%) with the flash-tip catheter versus 92 of 291 cases (31.6%) for the control catheter.Conclusion: The two catheters tested in this study had comparable rates of first-stick success, but the flash-tip catheter was associated with significantly less blood contamination during insertion attempts.