Provision of long-term venous access procedures by UK anaesthetists: a postal survey.

Long-term venous access is widely used in hospital and in the community for cancer chemotherapy, total parenteral nutrition and long-term administration of antibiotics. There is a large variety of catheters, ports and other devices designed to facilitate these treatments. A postal survey of anaesthetic departments in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland was undertaken to assess the role of anaesthetists in this area of clinical practice. Two hundred and fifteen out of 276 (78%) anaesthetic departments responded. Forty-three percent of departments (92 out of 215) provided some form of long-term vascular access service. Twenty-two percent of departments which provided this service (20 out of 92) had anaesthetists with sessional allocation for such procedures. Such work represents a significant workload for anaesthetic departments which is likely to increase over time.