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ogm
Bard PICC occlusions in oncology patients
Has anyone out there noticed an increased rate of occlusion in their oncology patients who have Bard PICCs (Groshong, open ended Power or  Solo)? Are you heprinising your open ended catheters ?What type of caps are you using? Thanks for your help-OGM
fizerjk
Bard solo, no increase, no
Bard solo, no increase, no heparin, ry-med

Jeffery Fizer RN, BSN

mary ann ferrannini
No we have not had an
No we have not had an increase. We do however,assertively train the nurses to perform a bid and prn flushing properly. We emphasize proper cap care and a pulsatile flush. Most of our problems have been around proper blood drawing procedure and post flushing. If the nurses are only using one lumen on a multi-lumen PICC sometimes they just ignore the other lumen and skip the flushes. I think there is an overall lack of understanding of proper flushing techniques and lots of nurses get confused about cap technology. Most of this teaching has to come from the IV nurses. Luckily.we have a very assertive team!!!!. We use a positive pressure cap. Try to figure out if your occlusion issues are from inferior care b/c if they are there are lots of thing you can do to improve on this. Another issue we had was with the clamps,,lots of nurses were getting confused with the PP caps and clamping the lumen and then disconnecting the syringe defeating the benefit of the PP cap.W of 10 ml use 10 ml NS followed by 50 units of Heparin (10 units per ml).
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