malfunction of totally implantable central venous ports

Background: malfunctions of totally implantable central venous ports (ticvps) have become a problem, as the usage of ticvps has increased enormously. objectives: this study evaluated factors related with catheter malfunctions of ticvps. patients and methods: between january 2010 and june 2012, 1,740 ticvps in 1740 patients (874 men and 866 women) with an average age of 57.7 ± 12.8 years (range: 15 - 91 years) were implanted by an interventional radiology team at our institute. catheter malfunctions were retrospectively analyzed. in the prospective study, we randomly allocated 176 patients to two kinds of ticvps in a 1:1 assignment ratio. the primary outcome was the malfunction of ticvps. results: in the retrospective study, the 32 malfunctioning ticvps were caused by fibrin sheath formations (n = 15), chamber thrombosis (n = 8), ticvp rotation (n = 5), catheter migration (n = 2), and blood clots within the catheters (n = 2). multivariate analysis showed that being female was a significant factor for poor patency rates of ticvps (hazard ratio: 5.06; 95% confidence interval (ci) 1.32 - 19.46, p = 0.018). in the prospective study, two chamber thromboses occurred in celsite® (n = 1) and humanport® (n = 1). the primary patency rates of both celsite® and humanport® were 98.9% at 6 months, respectively. conclusion: our data suggest that catheter malfunctions of ticvps are more common in females than males. the incidence of ticvp malfunctions does not differ between the two devices (celsite® vs. humanport®).