Comprehensive Nursing Intervention for the Management of a Tip-conductive Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter in Oncology Patients

Peripherally inserted central catheters (PICCs) play a great role in infusion of chemotherapy, parenteral nutrition, and intravenous fluid. It has the advantages of safety, convenience, long duration and low infection rate compared to central venous catheters (CVCs), becoming more and more popularized in clinical application. However, the clinical application of PICCs also causes complications, such as local infection, phlebitis, deep venous thrombosis, catheter malposition and breakage as well as liquid extravasation. The total complications rate varies mainly for three aspects: patients-related, catheter-related and operation-related. Disease types and severity of patients have been deeply researched. More concerns have been paid on the technology of catheter and operation to decrease the related complications. The intracavitary electrocardiogram (IC-ECG) method has been developed to be a safe, accurate and highly cost effective method. However, the traditional IC-ECG method is complicated and time consuming. Many researches have carried out to overcome the shortcomings of traditional methods. The tip-conductive PICC method came into being. The application of tip-conductive PICC greatly increases the first-attempt successful tip location and the tip location satisfactory. In this article, we reviewed the principle and characteristics of tip-conductive PICC, and comprehensive nursing care intervention including puncture, infection prevention, mechanical phlebitis, catheter blockage and catheter heterotopia and rupture.