Do central venous catheters have advantages over arteriovenous fistulas or grafts?
Central venous accesses have become an integral component of vascular access procedures for hemodialysis. Although the DOQI guidelines recommend that less than 10% of chronic hemodialysis patients should be maintained on catheters, in some countries higher prevalences are reported, as in the United States and the United Kingdom (18% and 24%, respectively, according to the DOPPS). The native arteriovenous fistulas are still the best suited accesses for hemodialysis. However, this option is impractical in many situations, so that several justifiable reasons exist for protracted dialysis catheter use; these include the catheter as a bridge angioaccess device, while the patient is awaiting living-related kidney donor transplantation or maturation of an autologous fistula or graft or, increasingly, as the permanent vascular access for patients with unsuitable vascular anatomy who have exhausted all other options. Moreover, the surgical creation of an AVF is felt to be impossible or at least
