Systematic Review Flowchart
[D] Text Description: This flowchart describes the systematic literature review by which the project derived figures on excess costs in U.S. dollars per CLABSI.
An initial search yielded a total of 855 abstracts, 841 of which were unique. Of these 841 unique abstracts, 792 were withdrawn for irrelevance, based on the abstract title or content.
From review of the references in the 49 articles that remained, 109 additional articles were identified, making the total number of articles reviewed 158. Of these, 152 were excluded, based on the following nine criteria:
- Article was published prior to 2002 (59 articles).
- Article did not calculate attributable CLABSI cost (39 articles).
- Article was not specific to CLABSI (17 articles).
- Article covered a geographic area outside of the United States (17 articles).
- Article was a review, meta-analysis, or systematic review (9 articles).
- Article combined CLABSI cost estimates with other infections (4 articles).
- Article was not peer-reviewed (4 articles).
- Article defined costs in a currency other than U.S. dollars (2 articles).
- Article defined a simulated cost model (1 article).
After these exclusions, a total of six articles remained, from which estimated CLABSI costs were derived.
