Study Detects Significant Risk of Blood Clots In Children With Central Venous Catheters
CINCINNATI -- Critically ill children or those with long-term illnesses often must have catheters placed through the upper chest into major blood vessels for medication or nutrition to be given intravenously.
But a new Children's Hospital Medical Center of Cincinnati study shows that a third of these children who have central venous catheters, commonly known as central lines, develop potentially dangerous clots surrounding the catheter. Moreover, 71 percent of those who develop clots show no signs or symptoms, according to Brian Jacobs, M.D., a physician in Cincinnati Children's Critical Care Division and the study's main author.
"Central venous catheters are essential, often life-saving devices, but this problem is significant," says Dr. Jacobs. "Until now, little was known about how common the problem is, because physicians wouldn't recognize these silent thromboses (clots) without looking for them with an ultrasound or other imaging study. Now that we have identified the extent of the problem, we can do additional research aimed at preventing clot formation on catheters."
Dr. Jacobs studied 60 critically ill children 2-years-old or younger following central venous catheter placement into one of the large veins within the chest. Ultrasound examinations determined that 21 of these children had clots that either surrounded the catheter or were attached to the blood vessel wall. The long-term significance of these clots is unknown, according to Dr. Jacobs, but is the subject of active research at Cincinnati Children's.
The study was first presented at the Society of Critical Care Medicine Educational and Scientific Symposium meeting in San Francisco. It is included this week in Physician's Weekly, a publication for physicians distributed to 250,000 hospitals nationwide.
Contact Information
Jim Feuer,
jfeuer@chmcc.org
