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Vascular access catheters for chemotherapy: Long‐term follow‐up
Author(s) -
Crea Paul
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
medical journal of australia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.904
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1326-5377
pISSN - 0025-729X
DOI - 10.5694/j.1326-5377.1982.tb132399.x
Subject(s) - medicine , catheter , vascular access , surgery , chemotherapy , tissue necrosis , infiltration (hvac) , hemodialysis , physics , thermodynamics
Accessible surface veins become increasingly difficult to find after repeated venepunctures. This unfortunate situation often arises in patients on long‐term chemotherapy, and can lead to soft tissue infiltration of toxic agents with resultant necrosis. A solution to this problem is the placement of long term indwelling vascular access catheters. Three different catheters are here described—the Raimondi, the Hickman, and the Broviac. They have been used 90 times in 78 patients over the last 2~ years. All have been very successful in terms of ease of insertion, inertness, lack of post‐operative infection, and prolonged duration of function. Thirty‐five patients were available for long‐term follow‐up (>6 months). Results in these show a mean catheter life varying from three to five months with a very low incidence of septicaemia, even in the immunologically compromised patients. The advantages of the various catheters are compared.