Disability and sustainability: reusable versus single-use catheters for persons with neurogenic bladder due to spinal cord injury

Intermittent catheterization (IC) and self-catheterization (ISC) are fundamental methods for management of neurogenic bladder. Reusable catheters are rare in developed countries; thus, further studies are needed to understand whether single-use consumers are open to the idea of reusing catheters. The major reason not to switch from reusable catheters to single-use is the belief that UTI is more likely with reusable ones.

• 1
  A metanalysis of seven trials performed by Christison et al. (2017) reported no difference in UTI rates between the two IC techniques.
• 2
  Kanaheswari et al. found an increase of prevalence of only asymptomatic bacteriuria in patients who reused catheters for a long period, with no increase in UTI [6].
• 3
  Sun et al. conducted a recent study to investigate how much of an impact single-use CIC had on the environment in the US. His study found that 206 million litres of waste per year could be produced by single-use CIC, or the equivalent of 80 Olympic swimming pools.