Central venous port system associated thromboses: outcome in 3498 implantations and literature review

From 1 July 1995 to 31 June 2006 we implanted 3498 intravenous port systems. In nearly all cases the indication was vascular access for chemotherapy.

We registered 199 complications (5.7%), mostly infections (n=85 i.e. 2.4%) and thromboses (n=63 i.e. 1.8%).

Permanent central venous catheters have become standard in the management of patients with malignancies. Because of the improvement of material and design during the past twenty years technical complications have been reduced significantly. The most frequent occurring medical complications are infection and thromboses. In order to further minimize these disadvantages we developed a "best practices" standard for port implantation combining own data with recent studies.