There are a lot of controversies surrounding the effect of anti reflux valves for the prevention of urinary tract infection especially in surgical patients.

Medical journals, studies, researches and experiments have tried to answer this main question: does anti-reflux valves affect urinary tract infections?

The thing is during surgical procedures, when the patient needs to be catheterized, the result would usually lead to urinary tract infections. This is mainly because after the surgery, patients’ immune system is a bit compromised.

Also, although urine is generally bacteria free, introduction of bacteria can come from other medium like catheterization. Because of this, a lot of physicians started studying about the cause and effect of UTI. One of these studies tries to answer this primary question: does anti-reflux valves affect urinary tract infections used closed drainage systems?

It is very crucial to address this because in the United States, urinary tract infections remain the most common nosocomial infection in ICUs. This is probably because ICU patients are confined to catheters and are likely to acquire bacteria.

Urinary tract infections are caused mainly by bacteria that is introduced into the urine and that infects other part of the urinary system like the bladder and the urethra.

Although one may obtain urinary tract infections through other medium such as sexual intercourse, for this specific topic, catheterization as a main root of UTI is dealt with.

Unfortunately, because a catheter is used for ill patients in the hospital, especially those in the intensive care units, these individuals are more likely to have bacterial infection. Such is why doctors and physicians are looking at ways to alleviate this bacterial infection by using anti-reflux valves or even closed drainage system.

In the study discussed above, ICU patients were subjected to two types of drainage systems: one with anti-reflux valves and the other without. More than 300 patients were enlisted and after use of these systems, they were subjected to urinalysis.

Urine was obtained and analyzed for bacterial content. Results showed that catheter associated bacteria can still be noted from both groups. This means that even the ones that used the anti-reflux valves still had bacteria present in their urine.

There was no significant difference between the two groups’ bacterial content. The researchers then concluded that anti-reflux valves have no effect whatsoever on preventing urinary tract infections for hospitalized patients.

So to answer the question, does anti-reflux valves affect urinary tract infections, one can say no based on medical studies made. As much as physicians want to prevent occurrence of urinary tract infections in patients who have to use catheters in hospitals, they are not able to do so with the use of such valves.

Doctors and physicians are encouraging medical staff to make sure that when they put on or remove catheters they only use the most sterile equipment. At least, by doing such risk of urinary tract infections hopefully will be lessened.

In terms of the use of anti-reflux valves to prevent such infections, no significant benefit has been reported.