European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Abstract

Totally implanted central venous port systems are widely used for chronically ill patients, who
need long-term access to central veins for prolonged therapy. As we do not have enough data
about the rate of complications in the Iranian population, we designed this study to investigate
our early and late complications related to chemotherapy port catheters (CPC), implanted by
vascular surgeons, assessing some risk factors and proposing ways to avoid or reduce them. In
this prospective study, 160 patients treated for cancer in Sina and 5th Azar hospitals in the
department of chemotherapy from January 2016, were participated. Our inclusion criteria
were age >18 years old, port surgery at our institution by vascular surgeons, ability to
understand the procedure, and provide consent for the study. Patients with serious physical
diseases or mental problems and children were excluded. A total of 160 patients (56 men and
104 women) were included. The mean age (±standard deviation) of patients was 53.5 (±16.49)
years. Forty-six patients (28.8%) had breast cancer and 72 (45 %) had gastrointestinal cancer.
We had 2 missing data in our follow-up, fifty patients (31.2%) still have their
catheters,70(43.8%) died and 38(23.8%) catheters were explanted. We didn’t have early
complications as we did the procedure under ultrasound and fluoroscopy guidance. Our
overall rate of complication was 6.8%. In this study, we reported infection as the most frequent
late complication related to our 160 chemotherapy ports. Future multi-centered studies with
large cohorts are needed to further corroborate our findings