• Br J Anaesth · Aug 2006

    Length of insertion for pulmonary artery catheters to locate different cardiac chambers in patients undergoing cardiac surgery.

    • D K Tempe, A Gandhi, V Datt, M Gupta, A S Tomar, V Rajesh, S Virmani, and A Banerjee.
    • Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care, G.B. Pant Hospital, New Delhi, India. tempedeepak@hotmail.com
    • Br J Anaesth. 2006 Aug 1;97(2):147-9.

    BackgroundAlthough, guidelines related to length of insertion of a pulmonary artery catheter to reach a particular cardiac chamber are available, these are not backed by clinical studies. We measured the length of insertion of pulmonary artery catheters to locate the right ventricle, pulmonary artery and pulmonary capillary wedge positions in 300 adult patients undergoing elective cardiac surgery.MethodsThe pulmonary artery catheters were inserted using a standard technique through the right internal jugular vein. The right ventricle, pulmonary artery and wedge position of the catheter were confirmed by the characteristic waveforms, and the length of insertion to these points was measured.ResultsThe right ventricle was reached at 24.6 (3) cm (95% CI 24.2-24.9 cm), pulmonary artery at 36 (4) cm (95% CI 35.6-36.5 cm) and wedge position at 42.8 (5.7) cm (95% CI 42.2-43.5 cm). The length of catheter to reach the right ventricle, pulmonary artery and wedge position was significantly more in patients undergoing valve surgery as compared with those undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting [26 (3.8) and 24 (2.5) cm; 38.5 (4.6) and 35 (3.2) cm; and 47.8 (6.9) and 41.2 (4.1) cm, respectively, P<0.001]. The length of insertion to reach pulmonary artery and pulmonary capillary wedge position was directly related to height of the patient (Pearson's correlation 0.157 and 0.15, respectively).ConclusionsWe have provided the norms related to length of insertion of pulmonary artery catheter, which should be useful in accurate placement of the catheter and minimize complications related to coiling of the catheter.

      Pubmed     Free full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…