[Prevention of catheter-related infections, The official American guidelines--from the Centers for Disease Control].

The official German guidelines for prevention of intravascular-device-associated infections were published by the Bundes-gesundheitsamt, now called the Robert-Koch-Institut, 12 years ago. The recently published official "Guidelines for Prevention of Intravascular-Device Associated Infections" of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are categorized according to scientific evidence. The American guidelines are very detailed and differ in some aspects from the official German guidelines. The purpose of the present paper is to inform the German-speaking anaesthesiologist about the official CDC guidelines and to provide an update on the prevention of intravascular-device-associated infections.