Reliability of prolonged infusion in cancer chemotherapy with the Groshong central venous catheter

In clinical studies on prolonged cisplatin infusion and radiotherapy for thoracic malignancies, cisplatin was administered by means of the central venous Groshong catheter, which requires lower maintenance than conventional devices, for its particular design. We evaluated results on 70 consecutive catheter insertions with 3605 catheter days of survey. The mean duration of the venous line access was 51.5 days/patient. The mean maximum period without maintenance, after a single heparin flush, was 16 days/patient, ranging from 2 days to 82 days. The frequency of pneumothorax and subcutaneous tunnel bleeding was 1.4%, and 2.8% respectively. The 60-day probabilities of recoverable catheter obstruction, slippage, local skin infection, and subclavian vein thrombosis were 2%, 4.5%, 1.4%, 3.1%, respectively. Our results show the ease of management of the Groshong catheter, which seems to ameliorate the standard techniques for prolonged central venous infusion.