Why you should never (rarely) do a femoral line



Screencast of my talk from Illinois College of Emergency Physician's NEXT Great Speaker Series.

Basically the reasons are:
  • they get infected.  JAMA. CCM.
  • there are guidelines (good guidelines) against doing them
  • there are some terrible insertion complications
  • the anatomy is highly variable
  • there are other, better options
Thanks to Seth for suggesting the screencast and screenr.com for well, the screencast.



Comments

  1. Matt's too humble to brag that he won the young speaker award at this year's ICEP with this talk

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  2. MAtt, Seth, thankyou. I debated this on EmCrit Live today and Scott supports you guys. I thought I had totally been defeated until I actually played this screencast and heard Matt admit that he had just recently resorted to femoral vein access not once but TWICE.
    I had to pick myself off the floor!
    What honesty!
    I therefore claim victory and declare that even chief residents at times may resort to femoral vein access when push comes to shove.
    By the way congratulations on the speaker award at ICEP.

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  3. Thanks for the congrats and to Seth for hosting the 'cast.

    I would say that ~5% of all central lines I put in are groin lines. Last one was an agitated guy on bipap who could not lay flat, family had refused intubation but he probably needed pressors. Even while putting it in I thought, "god this sucks."

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