what would cause blood to develop at the clamp on a tesio catheter. Anywhere from a couple of drops to about 2 cc. Its flushed with 10cc NSS and then a dwell of 2,1 cc heparin.

Possible the clamps were not occluding the catheter completely ? Is this a one time problem or happening frequently ?

I have had patients with blood back up any type of catheter after vomiting or hard coughing episodes. Not every time or every patient but occasionally it does happen. the real risk is that the blood backing up my clot the catheter. The tessio's I have worked with have been worse for this then other types of catheters. I routinely check the waste I draw off a tessio now to see if clotting is occurring in the catheter.

My catheter had develloped a leak at the site of insertion into yhe vein\, This caused the blood to infiltrate at flows above 200, and when the ports were flushed. Also caused blood to leak into sites of insertion. Had to replace with new style catheter