Introduction: The incidence of intravascular embolization of venous catheters reported in the world medical literature corresponds to 1% of all the described complications. However, its mortality rate may vary between 24 to 60%. Catheter malfunction is the most likely signal of embolization, since patients are usually asymptomatic.
Objective: To report the method of removing intravascular foreign bodies, catheters with the use of various endovascular techniques and procedures.
Methods: This is a two-year retrospective study of 12 patients: seven women and five men. The average age was 29 years (ranging from two months to 65 years).
Results: Technical performance was 100% successful. Ten port-a-caths, one intra-cath and one PICC were extracted. The most common sites for the lodging of one of the ends of the intravascular foreign bodies were the right atrium (41.6%) and the right ventricle (33.3%). In 100% of the cases, only one venous access was used for extraction of foreign bodies, and in 91.6% of the cases (11 catheters) the femoral access was used. The loop-snare was used in 10 cases (83.3%). The most common cause of intravascular foreign body insertion was a catheter fracture, which occurred in 66.6% of the cases (eight cases). One major complication, the atrial fibrillation, occurred (8.3%), which was related to the intravascular foreign body extraction. The mortality rate in 30 days was zero.
Conclusion: Percutaneous retrieval of intravascular foreign bodies is considered gold standard treatment because it is a minimally invasive, relatively simple, safe procedure, with low complication rates compared to conventional surgical treatment.