Port-A-Cath

What you should know

A Port-A-Cath is small device that is placed just under the skin near your collar bone. It is made up of 2 connected parts:

• The port -- a small pocket with a rubber top that needles can go into.

• The catheter -- a plastic tube that is threaded through a vein near your heart.

A Port-A-Cath will help you have fewer needle sticks in your veins when you get treatments or have blood taken for tests. Your port may be used for:

• Chemotherapy

• Blood transfusions

• IV fluids and medicines

• Blood samples

Wound care after your port is placed

• You may remove your bandage and take a shower 48 hours after your surgery.

• When you shower, just let the water run over your incision. Don’t scrub the wound. Pat dry.

• Don't take a tub bath or swim for 14 days after your surgery.

• Leave the paper strips in place over the incision until they fall off on their own. If they have not fallen off after 14 days, you may pull them off.

• When your incision is healed, you may swim and take baths if there is no needle in your port.

Helpful tips

• Any pain and swelling should go away within a week, but your shoulder may feel stiff and sore longer. It might also hurt the first time a needle is put into the port. The more the port is used, the less it will hurt. Your doctor or nurse may give you a special numbing medicine for your skin before you use your port.

• Ice: You may use ice for the first 24 to 48 hours after the port is put in to lessen swelling, pain, and redness. Put crushed ice in a plastic bag and cover it with a towel. Place this on the surgery area for 15 to 20 minutes every hour as long as you need it. Don’t sleep on the ice pack or leave it on longer than 20 minutes at a time because you can get frostbite. Never let the ice pack touch your skin directly. Always have a towel or a t-shirt between the pack and your skin.

• Heat: After the first 24 to 48 hours, you may use heat for 15 to 20 minutes every hour as long as you need it to lessen pain or swelling. You may use warm compresses, a heating pad, or a hot water bottle.

• A warm moist compress is a small towel that is damp with hot water and placed in a plastic bag. Wrap a towel around the plastic bag to prevent burns. Do not let the plastic bag touch your skin directly.

• If you use a heating pad, keep it turned on low.

Caring for your Port-A-Cath

A trained health care provider with flush the port. Never try to use or flush the port yourself.

• How often? The port will be flushed every 4 weeks. Call the Markey Hematology Program Clinic if this is not set up.

• What is used to flush it? It will be flushed with NS and Heparin flush.

• Where will this happen? Either home health will come to you or you will go to the Infusion Center or the MHP Clinic.

Here is some contact information about your port.

• For port care: ___________________________________________

• For port supplies: ________________________________________

Call your doctor if you have any of the following

•  Temperature of 101.5°F or higher for over 24 hours (unless you are told differently)

• Stitches are swollen, red, or have pus coming out of them

• Red streak from the port up your chest

• Face, neck or arm becomes swollen

• Area around the port is red, swollen, painful or feels warm

• Pain in your shoulder, arms, and neck that does not go away or gets worse

• Hard to get medicines to go into the port or the medicine has started going in much slower

• You have questions or concerns about your port