Heparin and PICCs

Nurses General Nursing

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Specializes in Med/Surg.

This may still pertain to the previous heparin question, but a different situation.

There's a policy at my hospital for flushing PICC lines as well. We had a situation where a patient had surgery and needed pain medication every hour. While getting report from the preivous nurse she states she was flushing with normal saline, but not the heparin. I would like to hear the solution to this please.:bugeyes:

We are switching over to the new end ports where we do not have to flush with heparin. Thanks for all who did reply.

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Specializes in Maternal - Child Health.

It sounds as though your unit would benefit from a consultation and inservice with the IV therapy team to help clarify the proper management of various types of PICC lines.

Secondly, a clearly written policy is needed to enable staff nurses to identify each type of PICC and know how it is to be maintained.

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Specializes in Med-surg.

It depends on what type of PICC line you have. Usually they have to be flushed with saline then heparin. But recently there are some new products that do not require heparin even though they are PICC lines. One is called SOLO PICC. You only flush with saline. But you need to know what type of equiptment is at your hospital. If they switched to a new product they should have provided information to all of the nurses. Follow your hospital policy.

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Specializes in Med/Surg.

You know what, reading the other message, we are switching over to the new end port in which we do not have to use heparin. Thanks for you opinion.

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A Groshong anything does not need heparin. Here, the only PICCs inserted are Groshongs and are easily identified because they are blue.

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Specializes in Cardiac, ER.

If I'm pushing meds that often I usually hang a bag of NS to run TKO so I don't have to flush so often. The new PICC will solve your problem.

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Specializes in Med/Surg.

Thank you very much.

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Specializes in ER.

If a patient is receiving a push of a pain med every hour is there even a need for the heparin? As long as something is being flushed and pushed through q hour then the line would stay patent. Obviously when the pushes cease then heparin would need to be instilled. Guess that method would only work with a single lumen though.

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Specializes in Oncology.

We've stopped using heparin for PICC and CVC flushes. We only use it with IVADs before de-accessing them.

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gidday may i ask what type of picc lines you utilise, protocol wise, and what your dressing type and protocols are for the above.thankyou,chez kids hospital western australia.

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Specializes in Cardiac Telemetry, ED.
gidday may i ask what type of picc lines you utilise, protocol wise, and what your dressing type and protocols are for the above.thankyou,chez kids hospital western australia.

We use Groshong PICCs and Purple Power PICCs. We flush with 10cc NS, pulsatile method. We use a Biopatch disc covered with Tegaderm for the dressing.

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