[Effectiveness and complications of percutaneous central venous catheters in neonatal intensive care]

Low birth weight babies and sick full-term babies, who require total parenteral nutrition and repeated intravenous applications of drugs, which irritate peripheral veins, very often need a reliable central venous catheter. The aim of our paper was to study prospectively the efficiency and the complications of peripheral percutaneous Silastic-catheters. Over a period of 9 month we inserted 114 central venous catheters via peripheral veins in 111 premature babies and sick full-term infants at our neonatal intensive care unit. The mean duration of use was 13.7 days, the catheter-induced septicaemia-rate was 3.5%. We never saw serious complications of a central venous catheter, the most common complication was an intravasal central obstruction, but we found no relation between the occurrence-risk of complications, the duration of use and the infusion flow rate.