Introduction: Peripheral venous catheters (PVC) may cause complications, specifically local. Their management varies across health care workers and wards, and guidelines recommendations are often weak and based on experts' opinion.
Aim: To measure the incidence of PVCs phlebitis, occlusions, accidental removal and infiltrations and their predictive factors in an orthopedic population.
Methods: From may 4 2009 to 30, in an orthopedic hospital, data on patients to whom a PVC was inserted were collected: patient's and PVC characteristics, management and securing strategies, until one of the following outcomes: phlebitis, occlusion, accidental removal, infiltration or end of treatment.
Results: Overall, 873 patients were recruited and 139 PVCs. The following complications occurred: phlebitis 10.9%; occlusions 16.8%; accidental removals 5.8%, local infiltrations 14.4%; 648 PVCs (46.5%) were removed without complications. The risk for all complications (multivariate analysis) increased with age and for the other complications also with the administration of blood transfusions thorough PVC, irritant drugs and use >3 times/day for phlebitis; small gauge, not using PVC and surgical site infections for occlusions; positioning the PVC in the hand and fixing the PVC with the Chevron method for accidental removals; and female sex, transfusions and thromboembolic therapy for infiltrations.
Conclusions: The incidence of phlebitis is high compared to the gold standard of 5%. Knowing the incidence of main complications is a requirement for any improvement strategy and may favor the abandonment of useless or dangerous practices.