PICCs

[75au78]

I have a question regarding PICCs (or central lines, in general). I have seen nurses flush all three lumens of a Triple-lumen PICC with a single 10ml prefill NS syringe and then a single heparin prefill syringe, and I have also seen nurses flush each lumen with it's own 10ml prefill syringe (3 individual NS syringes and then three individual heparin syringes). Our prefills include enough NS in 1 syringe to flush all 3 (we use 2ml NS each lumen), but I was taught to use a different syringe for each lumen. Which is the correct way, and why? I thought about the contamination issue, but if one lumen is contaminated, the whole line is bad anyway.

Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

[blondy2061h, MSN, RN]

Mama D's hospital policy is the same exact policy as mine. 10cc of NS q8h to each lumen. No heparin, ever.

I would never use 1 syringe for all however many lumens. Each lumen should have a full 10 cc, and it is a cross-contamination risk.

[DeepFriedRN]

Our hospital policy is to flush with 10mL NS using the pulsatile method Q8 hours. We no longer use heparin. We did a test/study before adopting this policy, and the result was that central lines did not occlude any more frequently with the NS flushes than they did using heparin, and NS does not carry the risk of HIT that heparin does.

:yeahthat: