Diagnostic accuracy of electronic surveillance tool for catheter-associated urinary tract infections in tertiary care hospitals: A meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Automated systems have been developed to reduce labor-intensive manual recordings during nosocomial infection surveillance. The diagnostic accuracies of these systems have differed in various settings. METHODS: We designed this meta-analysis to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of an electronic surveillance tool for catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) in tertiary care hospitals. We systematically searched databases such as Medline, Scopus, Cochrane library and Embase (from inception until November 2019) for relevant studies. We assessed the quality of trials using the diagnostic accuracy studies-2 tool, and performed a meta-analysis to obtain a pooled sensitivity and specificity for electronic surveillance. We included 6 studies with 16,492 patients in the analysis. RESULTS: We found a pooled sensitivity of electronic diagnostic surveillance for CAUTIs of 97.5% (95% confidence interval [CI], 67.6–99.9%) and a pooled specificity of 92.6% (95% CI, 55.2–99.2%). The diagnostic odds ratio was 494 (95% CI, 89–2747). The positive likelihood ratio was 13.1 (95% CI, 1.63–105.8) and the negative likelihood ratio 0.02 (95% CI, 0.001–0.40). A bivariate box plot indicated the possibility of heterogeneity between the included studies. CONCLUSION: Our review suggests that electronic surveillance is useful for diagnosing CAUTIs among hospitalized patients in tertiary care hospitals due to its high sensitivity and specificity.