Three years of experience with the swan-neck Tenckhoff catheter

In a retrospective study over three years, 23 patients were provided with a swan-neck Tenckhoff catheter (SNC) and 49 patients (control group) with a straight Tenckhoff catheter (STC) at the beginning of CAPD and were observed over a follow-up period of 608 patient-months. The aim of the study was to examine the reduction of complications in the course of CAPD with SNC resulting from technical causes, such as catheter dislocations, infections at the catheter's point of exit, the tunnel and the peritoneum. The causes of renal insufficiency, the reasons for choosing CAPD as a dialytic procedure, the causes of catheter loss as well as the frequency of infections associated with CAPD were analyzed. The main reasons for catheter loss were peritonitis and dislocations. In the SNC group a significant reduction of dislocations to 8.7% was observed as against 26.5% with STC. On the other hand, with SNC significantly more cases of peritonitis were observed in terms of statistics, with 1.1 episodes per patient-year (EOP/PY) compared with 0.3 EOP/PY with STC. The frequency of the exit site and tunnel infections and the cumulative survival probability of the catheters did not differ. The SNC is an interesting alternative to the STC; however, the expectations were only partly met.