Tunneled Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter (PICC) in Adult Patients and Associated Outcomes

The data published this year from a multicenter study in Brazil presenting the patterns of use and clinical outcomes of PICC indicated that centers with vascular access teams, adoption of best practices, and current technologies result in low rates of complications, such as primary bloodstream infections related to the catheter, deep vein thrombosis, and reversible occlusion. Despite these more recent data showing that complications related to PICC can be mitigated by the use of technology, vascular access teams, adoption of best practices, and infection control measures, there is still room to incorporate new techniques in PICC insertion with the aim of further reducing avoidable complications. For example, recent studies with robust methodology have demonstrated the benefit of the tunneling technique compared to the conventional insertion technique. A randomized clinical trial showed that the dwell time of the device inserted using the tunneling technique was longer compared to the conventional technique without tunneling in adult patients, along with a lower incidence of thrombosis and infection. At the Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre, recently, nurses from the PICC Team were trained in the tunneling technique at a reference center in Brazil. The initial results of tunneling in adult, pediatric, and neonatal patients are encouraging. The observed results of implementing the technique indicate that there is potential to reduce avoidable complications and prompt us to propose a multicenter randomized controlled trial involving two additional institutions with similar profiles regarding the composition of Vascular Access Teams, adoption of best practices related to catheter care, and active ongoing education. To our knowledge, robust studies of this nature are not currently being conducted in Brazil.