Spotlight On Vascular Access: Dialysis
Vascular access means providing a method to access a patient’s vascular system. This includes allowing healthcare providers to place something in a patient’s vascular system such as drugs, diagnostic agents, or devices, such as stents. It also allows the removal of bodily fluids from the patient’s arterial or venous systems.
Since patients may receive dialysis for decades, their vascular access is likely to evolve after the multi-weekly sessions. Problems may be clotting, loss of patency, infection, and other situations requiring revision of the AV fistula, developing a new one, or converting to an AV graft.
