Vascular Access Failure - Cause or Complication of Central Venous Catheterization: Case Report

• Main Authors: Zornic Nenad, Zunic Filip, Stolic Radojica, Spasic Marko, Radmanovic Branislav, Nesic Jelena
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Sciendo 2020-03-01
• Series: Serbian Journal of Experimental and Clinical Research
• Subjects: central venous catheter; infection; thrombosis; vascular failure
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.2478/sjecr-2018-0015
• ISSN: 1820-8665; 2335-075X

The quality of life and patient survival rate in terminal chronic renal insufficiency depends on the duration of vascular approaches. Dialysis catheters are used to establish an adequate vascular approach when emergency hemodialysis is indicated and when all approaches are exhausted. Complications of CVC can be classified into three categories: mechanical (hematoma, arterial puncture, pneumothorax, hemothorax, catheter misplacement, and stenosis), infectious (insertion site infection, CVC colonization, and bloodstream infection) and thrombotic (deep vein thrombosis). Despite the increasing prevalence of haemodialysis patients with complex access issues, there remains no consensus on the definition of vascular access failure or end-stage vascular access. The dilema in these cases remains whether the generalized vascular insufficiency is the cause or a complication of exhausted vascular accesses. This case report is one of the examples of combined complications with generalized vascular access insufficiency. During the year and a half of the chronic dialysis program, the patient had several changes of vascular approaches, and each approach became dysfunctional in certain time due to various causes. After six months of successful hemodialysis, the patient was admitted with signs of infection and during hospitalization was again subjected to multiple changes of the vascular approach due to infection, thrombosis, and vascular access failure.