Are the Placement, Maintenance, and Removal of Femoral and Sciatic Catheters Associated With Bleeding Complications in Vascular Patients on Antithrombotics? A Single-Center, Retrospective Cohort Study.

Background: Information on the safety of placement, maintenance, and removal of peripheral nerve blocks in the presence of therapeutic or prophylactic antithrombotics is limited to case reports.

Methods: In this retrospective, descriptive study, we examined the use of femoral and gluteal or subgluteal sciatic perineural catheters in 146 patients on antithrombotics who received lower limb amputation (LLA) above or below the knee at the University of Florida Health Shands Hospital between January 2015 and December 2019. We searched patient surgical records for complications such as bleeding, nerve damage, infection, and hematoma during placement, maintenance, and removal of the perineural catheters.

Results: In this cohort of 146 patients on antithrombotics, there was 1 episode of hematoma with an estimated incidence of 1 of 146 (0.68%, 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.02-3.76). This patient developed a hematoma at the location of the femoral catheter and required a blood transfusion. This patient was on aspirin daily and subcutaneous heparin 3 times per day and had a normal coagulation profile during their hospital stay.

Conclusions: This report investigates bleeding complications of femoral and sciatic perineural catheters in patients undergoing LLA on antithrombotics. We found that, except for 1 patient, most patients on varying combinations of antithrombotics did not experience bleeding complications related to the femoral and sciatic perineural catheters.