Table 1: Characteristics of the study population.
| Characteristics | All patients N = 53 | Patients with sterile catheter and without CRB N = 49 | Patients with CRB or catheter colonisation/contamination N = 4 | p |
| Age (years) | 66.5 (14.7) | 66.4 (14.2) | 67.5 (12.3) | 0.7 |
| Sex (M; F) | 36;17 | 33; 16 | 3;1 | 0.82 |
| APACHE II score | 25 (21.5-32) | 25 (20.5-33.2) | 24 (21.5-34) | 0.84 |
| SAPS II | 60 (49-73.5) | 60 (45.7-70) | 66 (48-75) | 0.45 |
| MODS N (%) | 44 (83) | 41 (83.6) | 3 (75) | 0.54 |
| Maximum SOFA score | 12 (11-15.75) | 12 (10-15) | 13 (12-14) | 0.31 |
| Hypertension N (%) | 12 (22.6) | 11 (22.4) | 1 (25) | 0.81 |
| Diabetes mellitus N (%) | 26 (49) | 24 (48.9) | 2 (50) | 0.69 |
| Cancer N (%) | 14 (26.4) | 13 (26.5) | 1 (25) | 0.23 |
| Immunosuppression N (%) | 6 (11.3) | 6 (12.2) | 0 | 0.78 |
| Permanent catheter N (%) | 1 (1,8) | 0 | 1 (25) | 0.0004 |
CRB: Catheter Related Bacteraemia. Age is expressed as media (standard deviation). Other variables as median (percentile 25-75) and N (number of patients and %). Comparison with Mann-Whitney U test, p value (level of significance of 95%). Sex expressed as the total number of male (M) and female (F) patients. APACHE: Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation; SAPS: Simplified Acute Physiology Score; MODS: Multiple Organ Dysfunction Syndrome and the maximum score (range) in the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA). Cancer: all types of carcinoma. Immunosuppression: previous diagnosis of clinically-relevant humoral or cellular immunosuppression.