Intravenous port placement facilitates chemotherapy for breast cancer patients

Over the past decade or so, central venous line placement has been widely used in breast cancer patients abroad to facilitate chemotherapy, rehydration, nutrition, and blood collection for breast cancer patients. Among the current vascular access devices, three are most commonly used: the intravenous port (Port), the end-open catheter (Hiekmen) and the central venous cannula (PICC) inserted through the peripheral vein. The different vascular access devices have their own characteristics. In the United States, about 5 million central venous catheters are placed each year. The Department of General Breast Surgery of our hospital started to apply the technology of central venous catheter (PICC) in breast malignancy cases from June 2013, and nearly 100 patients have been placed with central venous catheter (PICC) so far with good results. However, the restriction of upper limb movement after placement, swelling of upper limb after infusion and inconvenience of usual maintenance still make breast cancer patients not very satisfied.  Recently, under the leadership of Dr. Chengcai Yao, the head of our department, we have carried out transjugular intravenous infusion port implantation for postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy patients with breast malignant tumors (Figure 1, 2), and achieved good results. The intravenous infusion port has advantages over the previous central venous cannula (PICC) in terms of effect evaluation, complication prevention and daily maintenance, overcoming the disadvantages of post-chemotherapy cannula placement, and is popular among breast cancer chemotherapy patients.