Hi everyone,

I have a question about taking blood out of a arterial line by children under 26 weeks of age;

- how many seconds does everybody take to get blood out of the line by these children and how many seconds do you take to put the heparine back.

- Is there some literature about damiging the brain when you flush to fast (to put the heparine back)?

- Does everybody flush by hand or do you use a device to flush?

Hope that you can help.

Greetings from the Netherlands

There is an article that shows that cerebral blood flow decreases during sampling from an umbilical artery. The more time you take while drawing blood and the less blood you remove, the better.

Umbilical artery catheter blood sampling volume and velocity: impact on cerebral blood volume and oxygenation in very-low-birthweight infants.

At our department we only use saline to flush and we do this by hand.

Interestingly also sampling from a UVC leads to decreased blood flow in the brain (research by the same group): Blood sampling via umbilical vein catheters decreases cerebral oxygenation and blood volume in preterm infants.

Hi Franseco,

Thanks for your reaction and the links to the articels.

We also use saline, combined with heparine. But how many seconds do you flush by hand?