Catheters: Research

(asked on 27th September 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether any funds are being made available from the public purse for Southampton University's trial to compare mixed multi/single-use catheter management with single-use catheter management by intermittent catheter uses.


Answered by
Caroline Dinenage Portrait
Caroline Dinenage
This question was answered on 7th October 2019

The Department funds research through the National Institute for Health Research. A trial to compare mixed multi/single-use catheter management with single-use catheter management for people with intermittent catheter use was funded by the Programme Grants for Applied Research programme in 2013 with a funding level of £2,374,857.

The project consists of several work packages, leading up to the clinical trial, including: identifying and describing how and why different catheters are selected/prescribed from different viewpoints; developing, testing and comparing methods of reusing, storing and lubricating catheters to identify the most effective, safe and practical technique; developing a questionnaire to measure quality of life of people using indwelling catheters (IC); identifying which symptoms relate to urine infection in IC users; and finally carrying out a clinical trial to determine the acceptability of different catheter designs and the effect on quality of life and infection.

The clinical trial was approved by the South Central, Hampshire A Research Ethics Committee on 12 July 2019 and by the Health Research Authority on 9 August 2019.

As ethical approval has only recently been granted, no participants have been recruited to the trial to date.

Reticulating Splines