Summary
This journal article presents the results of a study on the success and complication rates of ultrasound-guided peripheral intravenous (IV) catheter placement performed by emergency department (ED) technicians. The study aimed to assess the effectiveness of this technique and compare it to similar studies in the literature.
The study included 830 participants who received US-guided peripheral IV catheter placement attempts by trained ED technicians. The overall success rate for this procedure was 97.5%. A majority of the participants (82.6%) were categorized as having difficult IV access, and 46.5% would have required a central venous catheter if the US-guided peripheral IV catheter placement had failed.
Most successful catheter attempts (86.8%) were achieved on the first try, with 11.6% on the second attempt, and 1.6% on the third attempt. The average number of attempts per success in this study was 1.15, which was lower than in other published studies. The overall success rate of ED technician-performed attempts was 0.970, higher than reported in previous studies involving ED technicians and closer to the success rates of physicians or nurses. The study also found a low arterial puncture complication rate of 0.8%, which was lower than that in other published studies.
In conclusion, the study demonstrates that with brief but comprehensive training, ED technicians can successfully perform ultrasound-guided peripheral IV catheter placement in patients with difficult IV access, achieving a high success rate and lower complication rates
