During a period of 5 years, 8 months, umbilical artery catheterization was performed on 387 infants in a newborn nursery. The indwelling catheter, at first introduced only to secure arterial blood for diagnostic and investigative purposes, was subsequently employed for intravascular fluid therapy in the same infant, and ultimately (in 51 of the 387 infants) for such fluid therapy alone. Complications observed were either vasospasm and temporary blanching of an extremity (13 infants: 11 surviving without apparent sequelae, 2 dying but without local complications at autopsy) or thrombosis, arteritis, or other inflammation noted at postmortem (18 infants).
Such complications were not causes of death at autopsy, but their finding suggests the need for limiting the procedure to infants in whom any other route of blood sampling or fluid administration is particularly difficult.
Aortic aneurysm resulting from umbilical artery catheterization: Case report, literature review, and management algorithm
