Two Cases of Retained Permanent Central Venous Hemodialysis Catheters

Abstract

Temporary (CVCt) and or permanent (CVCp) central venous catheters (CVCs) have been more and more used in our dialysis units. One of the problems related to CVC use, due to permanent devices permanence in situ for a long time, is the difficulty in removing them because of tight adhesions between vessel wall and CVCp.

For these complications rate growing in last years, there are no defined guidelines. It is therefore important to share clinical cases and procedures used to solve the problem to define the true incidence of the phenomenon, removal related complications and the best solutions. In this paper, we describe two cases of difficult removal of CVCp positioned via left internal jugular vein into superior vena cava and the method used to remove them from the vessel.