Design and proof-of-concept evaluation of a touchless connector system for preventing peritoneal dialysis-associated peritonitis.

In this paper, we describe the design of a touchless peritoneal dialysis connector system and how we evaluated its potential for preventing peritoneal dialysis-associated peritonitis, in comparison to the standard of care. The unique feature of this system is an enclosure within which patients can connect and disconnect for therapy, protecting their peritoneal catheters from touch or aerosols. We simulated a worst-case contamination scenario by spraying 40mL of a standardized inoculum [ 1×10 No contamination was observed in test samples from the touchless connector system, compared to 65%, 75% and 70% incidence contamination for the standard of care on Luria Bertani agar, Mannitol Salts Agar and Pseudomonas isolation agar respectively. Results show that the touchless connector system can prevent fluid path contamination even in heavy bacterial exposures and may help reduce peritoneal dialysis-associated peritonitis risks from inadvertent contamination with further development.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Competing Interests IOY, AT and TV invented the touchless connector. TV is an employee of Cerovations LLC, a company that has licensed the connector from the University of Minnesota for commercialization.