Spontaneous chemoport fracture and cardiac migration

Abstract

Central venous access devices are routinely used in oncology for delivering chemotherapy of which implantable chemoports are the most common. Spontaneous breakage and migration of the catheters is a very rare but known complication of the procedure. Patients will usually present with cardiac manifestations in form of chest pain or arrythmias. Herein we report a case of spontaneous breakage and cardiac migration in which the patient was asymptomatic. Patient was successfully managed by an interventional cardiologist.

Keywords: Chemoport; Fracture; Migration.

Fig 1

Chest x-ray showing the migrated catheter and the retrieved catheter fragment and port after removal

Fig 2

Fluoroscopy image of catheter retrieval using “lasso” technique