Introduction: Heart failure is a medical condition in which the damaged heart muscle cannot pump enough blood to meet the metabolic needs of other organs and tissues. There are several ways to treat heart failure, from non-pharmacological to treatment with drugs and more invasive surgical methods such as heart transplantation and the use of long-term left ventricular assist devices. The latter improves the survival and quality of life of patients with advanced heart failure, but adverse complications such as bleeding, thromboembolic events, right ventricular failure, and infections can occur with this therapy, the most common of which is the driveline infection. The nurse's role is to monitor these patients, provide health education and do regular driveline dressings. Purpose: The goal is to determine the incidence of the driveline infection in patients with long-term let ventricular assist devices and to define statistically significant risk factors for driveline infection. Methods: We performed a retrospective analysis of patients with long-term left ventricular assist devices implanted in the Advanced Heart Failure and Heart Transplantation Program, Clinical Department of Cardiology, University Clinical Center Ljubljana from 1/1/2009 to 12/31/2021. We obtained the data from the patients' documentation and processed them statistically using the IBM SPSS v22 program according to their normal or abnormal distribution. Statistical significance was determined by p < 0.05. Results: Driveline infection was present in 16 patients (24.2%). We found that body mass index over 30, longer duration of left ventricular assist device support, HeartMate II pump compared to HeartMate III pump, and traction of the driveline were associated with a higher incidence of driveline infection, while male sex, concurrent diabetes, chronic kidney disease, and the patient's health status at implantation were not associated with a higher incidence. Discussion and conclusion: The results show a comparable incidence of driveline infection as in other studies. The nurse can educate the patients about reversible risk factors such as increased body weight, the exposure of the driveline, and the importance of preventing driveline traction. Changing the driveline dressing using an aseptic method and driveline fixation are also of utmost importance. Additional quality research on potentially reversible risk factors and their prevention is warranted.
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