CONTEXT Indwelling invasive devices inserted into the body for extended are associated with infections.

OBJECTIVE This study aimed to estimate infection proportion and rates associated with invasive devices in pediatric healthcare.

DATA SOURCES Medline, CINAHL, Embase, Web of Science, Scopus, Cochrane CENTRAL, clinical trial registries, and unpublished study databases were searched.

STUDY SELECTION Cohort studies and trials published from January 2011 to June 2022, including (1) indwelling invasive devices, (2) pediatric participants admitted to a hospital, (3) postinsertion infection complications, and (4) published in English, were included.

DATA EXTRACTION Meta-analysis of observational studies in epidemiology guidelines for abstracting and assessing data quality and validity were used.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Device local, organ, and bloodstream infection (BSIs) pooled proportion and incidence rate (IR) per-1000-device-days per device type were reported.

RESULTS A total of 116 studies (61 554 devices and 3 632 364 device-days) were included. The highest number of studies were central venous access devices associated BSI (CVAD-BSI), which had a pooled proportion of 8% (95% confidence interval [CI], 6–11; 50 studies) and IR of 0.96 per-1000-device-days (95% CI, 0.78–1.14). This was followed by ventilator-associated pneumonia in respiratory devices, which was 19% (95% CI, 14–24) and IR of 14.08 per-1000-device-days (95%CI, 10.57–17.58).

CONCLUSIONS Although CVAD-BSI and ventilator associated pneumonia are well-documented, there is a scarcity of reporting on tissue and local organ infections. Standard guidelines and compliance initiatives similar to those dedicated to CVADs should be implemented in other devices in the future.