Transducing a PICC line

[RNontheroad]

Being a traveler, I get to see a variety of hopsital policies. Transducing a PICC line for a CVP reading is one of those things that vary.

When I started out as a new nurse, we would have never dreamed of doing this. With the recent introduction of the "Power PICC", we can do alot of things that we were not able to do before.

What is your hospital policy and what is the rationale? Anyone know what the manufacturer says about this?

[CritterLover, BSN, RN]

piccs can be transduced for a cvp as long as they are "open" -- that is, valve-less.

you wouldn't be able to transduce a groshong, or the boston scientific pasv picc, since they both have valves.

other than paying attention to the type of picc you have, you would just want to make sure that the tip was in either the svc or ra.

some argue that the long length of a picc increases the chances of small clots or kinks that would interfere with accurate cvp measurements. while this is true to an extent, you would just want to pay attention to the quality of the waveform and how dampened the square wave test is.

the last hospital i placed picc in did not use piccs for cvp because they used the boston scientific pasv picc. they were planning on writing a policy for it once they started using an open-system picc.

last i heard from the rep, boston scientific was going to use the ability to transduce a cvp from their new picc as one if its selling points. not sure what ended up happening.

eta: i didn't find anything on boston scientific's website, but bard's nursing guide for its power picc does list cvp monitoring as a feature.