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Placement of a Central Venous Catheter

During chemotherapy, you will have to have several lab tests done to make sure that the drugs are not extremely disrupting your blood counts, because this could make you sick and cause problems with recovery. Therefore, blood gets drawn frequently.

Since there is so much blood taken and so many drugs that have to be injected into your vein, you will have surgery to put in a central venous catheter. A central venous catheter is tubing that is tunneled under the skin into a major vein of the chest. A portion of the catheter runs out of the chest and is capped off by a Dacron cuff, allowing usage without a needle stick. This saves you a lot of unnecessary pain, and helps the treatment team access the vein much easier as well.

At all times a dressing is required to cover the place where the catheter comes through the skin. The dressing should be changed regularly. Family members can be taught to do the dressing changes at home between treatments. The catheter needs to stay dry, so showering and swimming need to be avoided while the catheter is in place. The catheter is taken out at the end of treatment, unless infection or irritation occurs.