Management of Retained Central Venous Catheters
With Dr. Ian Glenn · StayCurrentMD
Part of
Single Ventricle / HLHS 37 items
Educational content from recorded physician discussions — not medical advice. Talk to your (or your child's) care team about your situation.
More about catheter retention
same diagnosisOnly a few other public items share this diagnosis — nothing to add yet.
Video
Do we need Bowel Prep
1 min · Published Apr 2019
Video
Intussusception - Soft Tissue Abscess - Pilonidal Cyst - Bleeding Meckel's...
19 min · Published Nov 2018
Video
Posterior Tracheopexy For Severe Tracheomalacia
Dr. Todd Ponsky · 2 min · Published Feb 2018
Video
Posterior Tracheopexy For Severe Tracheomalacia
Dr. Todd Ponsky · 2 min · Published Feb 2018
Podcast
Intestinal Failure with Dr. Brad Warner
52 min · Published May 2017
Podcast
Intestinal Failure with Dr. Brad Warner
52 min · Published May 2017
Video
Pediatric Surgical Oncology Research Collaborative (PSORC): Studying Rare Pediatric Tumors
56 s · Published May 2026
Video
Update Course Rewind 2025: Hirschsprung + ARM: Rare but Real
1 min · Published May 2026
Video
Update Course Rewind 2025: Hirschsprung + ARM: Rare but Real
1 min · Published May 2026
Video
Pooling Patients to Study Rare Pediatric Tumors: An Introduction to PSORC
56 s · Published May 2026
Video
The fetal frontier: A review of current and emerging fetal therapies for genetic diseases
44 s · Published May 2026
Video
Indocyanine green assists with sentinel lymph node mapping in pediatric and adolescent patients
1 min · Published May 2026
What the experts said
5 to 15% of patients who have catheters removed require some sort of additional intervention to remove the catheter.
The actual number of catheters or catheter fragments that get left behind is 0.2 to 2%.
Risk factors for catheter retention include chemotherapy infusion through the line.
Risk factors for catheter retention include catheters that are indwelling for longer than about a year and a half.
There is an association between polyurethane catheter material and catheter retention when compared with silicone catheters.
Power ports are polyurethane catheters.
The recommendation would be to go with silastic catheters for long-term chemotherapy cases.
Surgical venotomy to retrieve a retained catheter carries a risk of bleeding.
In interventional radiology case series attempting endovascular catheter removal, there was a risk of the line completely breaking and embolizing distally.
In interventional radiology case series attempting endovascular catheter removal, there was a risk of thrombosis occurring during the procedure.
Multiple studies of patients with retained catheter fragments, with follow-up periods from months to the order of 5 years, found no complications.
No thrombosis was associated with retained catheter fragments in studies with follow-up from months to 5 years.
No infections were associated with retained catheter fragments in studies with follow-up from months to 5 years.
Silastic lines generally have a larger size diameter for a given lumen compared to polyurethane lines.
There has never been a report of a problem by leaving a retained catheter tip in, although long-term data are lacking.