Central Line Study

Summary

Two different techniques for placing a central venous catheter will be compared. The studyu team hypothesizes that clinicians randomized to the peripheral catheter technique will have higher first attempt success rates, fewer procedural complications, and a shorter mean time to procedure completion than physicians assigned to wire through hollow bore needle.

Detailed Description

Central venous catheterization (CVC) is a lifesaving procedure carried out by emergency and acute care physicians to access proximal blood vessels in order to deliver medications, blood products and other resuscitative agents. Typically, this access is achieved by threading a wire through a hollow bore needle and then placing the central venous catheter over the wire. This procedure, called the Seldinger technique, results in the cannulation of the femoral or internal jugular veins. Nowadays, physicians use concurrent ultrasound guidance rather than an anatomic landmark-based approach to increase the success rate of central venous catheterization. The wire through hollow bore needle approach requires the use of two hands to hold the needle in the vessel in order to pass a guidewire. When done under ultrasound guidance, this requires dropping the ultrasound probe in order to have both hands available to achieve vessel cannulation. Recent research has demonstrated that cannulation of central veins can be obtained by first using a peripheral intravenous catheter rather than a hollow bore needle. This technique requires just one hand, thereby allowing the physician to continue use of the ultrasound. Furthermore, the peripheral intravenous catheter is more stable within the vein than the hollow bore needle and less likely than the needle to damage the vessel wall when the catheter is jiggled. This is the same technique used to place mid-lines, a hybrid technique that incorporates the Seldinger technique and a peripheral intravenous catheter.

Eligibility Criteria

Interventions