Safety of daily ethanol locks for urinary catheters in critically ill children: a pilot study.

Catheter-associated urinary tract infections represent a significant medical burden in critically ill children. Ethanol locks have been shown to be effective and safe for central line-associated bloodstream infection prevention and we propose utilizing this strategy for urinary catheters. Because this has never been done, we evaluated its safety with a pilot study hypothesizing that ethanol locks in urinary catheters would result in negligible alcohol absorption and negligible irritation of the bladder.