Complications in adolescent Hodgkin's lymphoma patients with PICC lines

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So my research was looking at complications in adolescent Hodgkin's lymphoma patients with PICC lines. So the team at Oxford have moved towards using PICC lines for adolescent patients because we found that, you know, that reduces scarring, there's lower rates of infection and generally it's just better for our older patients. But the team on the ground felt that there was a high rate of complications with these lines compared to the Hickman lines that are traditionally used for younger patients, particularly with regards to the lines blocking and not bleeding back.

So my project was an audit trying to quantify those complications. I looked back at data over the last two years and looked at patients that were between 9 and 16 that have been treated for Hodgkin lymphoma on the ward. There were 11 patients treated over that time and we found that there was a really high rate of complications. So nine of the children experienced at least one complication, and those were mostly all either the line becoming blocked, and we also had some cases of DVT. But actually compared to the national data our infection rates were really low.

So going forwards, what we want to do is talk to other paediatric oncology teams, share our experiences to see how we can minimise those rates. So we've already thought about how we use different line sizes, trying to use single lumen lines, but we're very keen to learn about how different centres use either heparin locks or saline and see if maybe this could be something to change our practice going forward to help minimise complications for our patients.