"Quinton"/Apheresis Catheters

Ron,
When you say dialysis cath I assume you mean large bore. We use vas caths, but I can't remember what brand. We dicourage any use of them by anyone but dialysis, and we instill a great dael of heparin in ours--2500u per port (2.5 cc NS). This is of course withdrawn prior to any pursuant infusion. If you are talking about implanted caths like a Groshong or the smaller Quentins, no, we don't use heparin. We use only Saline. We ust the 25u/cc flush in triple lumen caths in unused ports. If the cathter is valved we use saline only. Hope this helps.

Hi Ron,
At our institution we have started using trisodium citrate to lock all of our vascaths (we use several different types). 3ml of preprepared sol'n per port. We used to lock them with 5000u heparin per port using the manufacturers reccomendation for volume.