Does your facility aspirate blood before removing a sheath?

This is from Mosbys

"Attach a 10-ml syringe to the blood sampling port of the stopcock, turn the stopcock off to the flush bag, and gently draw back 5 to 10 ml of blood into the syringe."

The rationale is what someone else mentioned if there is a clot.

That is why I hadn't heard about it, because I haven't been pulling sheaths lately so it not old school but EVP.

It says to aspirate when removing the dilator, probe, or catheter. It does not say to aspirate when removing the sheath itself.

Thanks!

Our unit typically doesn't aspirate first. When we pull sheaths we use a Hemcom patch which helps the site to clot off while holding pressure and depending on who is pulling the sheath depends on how they activate the patch. It needs a small sample of blood on it to activate the clotting factor in it. Some people will aspirate blood from the sheath first to put on the patch and some will let the site ooze a little and then let put the patch over it and hold manual pressure. We very rarely have Dr.'s use anything but angiomax in the cases but every now and then you have some who will use heparin and we'll have to draw an ACT before we can pull our sheaths.

But thankfully we've had a reduction in the number of sheaths on our unit since our Dr.'s have discovered the Mynx closure device which has made our job SO much easier!!!

We aspirate.

I have worked at 4 hospitals in my area and none of them do it............never even heard of this practice before.

Never heard of this practice on my unit. Also, I think I've only seen once or twice where a doc has used Angiomax. We mostly get heparin +/- Integrilin or Reopro.