Drawing blood from a PICC line

Is there a better way to draw blood samples from a PICC line other than drawing the sample in a syringe and transfering it to a vacutainer tube? Thanks......
Not really. Vacutainer tubes create too much suction. Best way to do it is to use a small syringe, no more than 5 ml. You will have to use several syringes but it's better than losing the line. This would not make the pt or his doctor happy.

I have drawn blood from PICC's for years on an IV team - and we always use vacutainers - and have no problems. A syringe actually creates more pressure than the vacutainer we find - we will use a syringe when the blood will not come vacutainer method. For these times we have a syringe transfer vacutainer so we don't have to add a needle to the syringe to perform the transfer. :spin:

I always use the vacutainer that connects directly to the picc. Works fine for me.

i use a vacutainer, or a 10 or 12 cc needless syringe. the smaller syringes exert too much pressure and can collapse the line.

One of the first things I learned on the floor was to never ever use less than a 10cc syringe to draw blood from a PICC line.

Quote from tazzirnnot really. vacutainer tubes create too much suction. best way to do it is to use a small syringe, no more than 5 ml. you will have to use several syringes but it's better than losing the line. this would not make the pt or his doctor happy.

Pressure is equal to force/area. A 3ml or 5ml syringe has a smaller area and therefore has a greater pressure than a 10ml syringe. The 10ml gimmick is more appropriate for the PICC lines.

Our PICC team does all blood draws from PICC lines. They always use vacutainers.

one big thing is you NEVER directly attach blood culture bottle to the picc. The culture medium in the bottle is deadly if it gets into blood stream.

I didn't know you could hook a vacutainer directly to a picc line. How does this work?? Do you use the vacutainer transfer device to do it? I'm having trouble visualizing this one. At my facility, you use a 10cc syringe and you have to waste the 1st 10cc syringe (unless you're drawing blood for blood cultures).

You never want to "pop the top" off of a vacutainer tube. If you let the vacuum draw the sample from the syringe, then you get the proper amount of blood to anticoagulant and remove the dilutional factor. Coagulation tubes MUST be filled properly or the results are invalid. Also, when you remove the stopper, the stopper can come in transport contaminating an entire transport system.

As an oncology nurse our pts have either piccs or some kind of central line (ie. hickmans, groshongs) or a permacath. I use vaccutainers with all blood draws, unless I cant get any blood back and then I will try to used 10cc syringes. If that doesnt work and we cant get ANY blood back we will TPA the line....but thats another story.