Real-time ultrasound-guided internal jugular vein cannulation by oblique-axis in-plane: Practice at the Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University.

OBJECTIVE: We aimed to evaluate oblique-axis in-plane (OA-IP) techniques for real-time ultrasound-guided internal jugular vein (IJV) cannulation. METHODS: We retrospectively analysed 1065 patients who underwent ultrasound (US)-guided IJV cannulation. We recorded demographic characteristics of patients, success rate, access time, cannulation time, number of attempts and the incidence of acute complications. RESULTS: The overall success rate of the procedure was 100% (n = 1605). In total, 1594 cases (99.3%) were successful at the first attempt, and 11 (0.7%) were successful at the second attempt; no patient required three or more attempts. The mean access time was 18.7 ± 19.3 seconds. The mean cannulation time was 349.0 ± 103.8 seconds. There were 54 (3.4%) acute complications out of the total 1605 cannulations: 23 cases of puncture site bleeding (1.4%), 20 cases allergic to dressing (1.3%), 10 cases of local cervical hematomas (0.6%), and one catheter misplacement (0.1%). There were no major complications 12 hours following the procedure. CONCLUSIONS: The results of our study suggest that OA-IP techniques can improve ultrasound-guided IJV cannulation with a high success rate and safety in clinical practice. Clinicians should consider adopting these methods.