To report on a simple technique of inserting any difficult urinary catheter using a hydrophilic guidewire and an angiocatheter.
A total of 764 requests were made to the urology team for assistance with a difficult urinary catheter placement. For all patients, either a regular or bent-tip catheter was attempted first. If the initial placement attempt failed, our technique using an angiocatheter, a hydrophilic guidewire, and a urinary catheter of choice was then employed.
We were able to successfully insert 526 regular or bent-tip indwelling urinary catheters on first attempt (68.8%). Two hundred and four (26.7%) placements required the use of our described technique. No complication was encountered from the bedside maneuver.
Our method is safe, easily learned, and performed. The technique saves time, effort, and resources, as it averts the necessity of rare use of expensive equipment, bedside flexible cystoscopy, and cystotomy.
JAAPA : official journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants. 2019 Aug [Epub]
Robert Luangkhot, Einstein Cheng, Meilong Yuan, Mariam Rashidzada, Yi Chen, Yevgeniy Yakubov, Jonathan Babayev, Elizabeth Franco, Rinku Prithiani
Robert Luangkhot is an attending physician at Pinnacle Urology in Flushing, N.Y. Einstein Cheng, Meilong Yuan, Mariam Rashidzada, Yi Chen, Yevgeniy Yakubov, Jonathan Babayev, and Elizabeth Franco practice at New York Presbyterian in Queens, N.Y. Rinku Prithiani practices psychiatry at Queens Hospital in New York City. The authors have disclosed no potential conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise.