Drawing Blood From PICC Lines

[rileygrl11]

I work on an Oncology unit where many pts have PICC lines. there are 3 drs that routinely start them for us. These drs say that we are not to use them to draw blood for labs. They have said that this will cause the line to collapse. At my hospital, the RN has to do lab draws from central lines/PICCS. Some RN's abide by this and have lab stick the patient for labs. Other RN's draw blood from the PICC reason being,....they don't have any veins to begin with (which is why they have the PICC). I would like to get your opinion on this. I am a fairly new grad and have made waves with this. I used to draw blood from them until I learned the drs said not to. So now I refuse to do it and have lab do it (often times they are unable to get enough blood or can't find a good vein). Just curious. Thanks!

[daconlon]

rileygrl11 said:

I work on an Oncology unit where many pts have PICC lines. there are 3 drs that routinely start them for us. These drs say that we are not to use them to draw blood for labs. They have said that this will cause the line to collapse. At my hospital, the RN has to do lab draws from central lines/PICCS. Some RN's abide by this and have lab stick the patient for labs. Other RN's draw blood from the PICC reason being,....they don't have any veins to begin with (which is why they have the PICC). I would like to get your opinion on this. I am a fairly new grad and have made waves with this. I used to draw blood from them until I learned the drs said not to. So now I refuse to do it and have lab do it (often times they are unable to get enough blood or can't find a good vein). Just curious. Thanks!

The big risk of drawing labs from any central line, PICC, porta cath, sub clavian etc is the risk of infection caused by poor technique. This is very manageable, however. Just clean the cap properly and use aseptic technique. I work at MD Anderson in Houston. Hundreds of times per day labs are drawn from central lines ( PICC lines included ).

The claim that the PICC will collapse is totally incorrect, never happens. Just keep it clean and saline or heplock flush per your hospitals policy. I do not want to minimize the infection risk ,but think about all of the chemo that we deal with as well as infection control issues with isolation patients. We are professionals and just have to do it right. So your doctors are wrong.

Hope that my comments are helpful.

David