Letters
Surgical cutdown technique should not be abandoned
EDITOR,--Andy Adam dismisses the surgical cutdown technique for gaining access to the subclavian vein to insert a long term central venous catheter.1 We have used an open approach to the internal jugular vein for the past 10 years. This method does not suffer from the low success rate quoted by Adam, has an operating time of between 15 and 45 minutes, and rarely compromises the vein for future use. It avoids not only the major complications associated with blind puncture of the subclavian vein but also what Adam terms "the one real problem" with the radiologically guided percutaneous method--namely, that most x ray department can barely cope with the demand for conventional imaging without the placement of venous catheters being added to their repertoire.
We do not doubt the value of blind or radiologically guided percutaneous placement techniques in the hands of experts and look forward to the day when
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
StumbleUpon 
Technorati What's this?
Relevant Article
- Insertion of long term central venous catheters: time for a new look
- Andy Adam
BMJ 1995 311: 341-342.[Extract] [Full Text]
This Article
- Full text
- Respond to this article
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when responses are posted
- Alert me when a correction is posted
Services
- Email this article to a friend
- Find similar articles in BMJ
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Related Content
Bookmark with
What's new
Latest blogs
Find BMJ on:
Services
Tools
Online poll
Resources
Rapid responses for this article
There are no rapid responses for this article. Print issues
