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.
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.