The Ideal Vascular Access in Patient's with Sickle Cell Disease
Benjamin Watson, Christopher Carsten
Prisma Health, Greenville, SC
Backround: Sickle cell disease is one of the most common hemoglobinopathies in United States with about 1and 600 African-Americans in this country being homozygous for the disease. Exchange transfusion has been shown to be beneficial in some of these patients; however, maintaining reliable vascular access with implanted ports and tunneled dialysis lines has resulted in unacceptably high rates of complications. This study aims to show that permanent vascular access in the form of a fistula or graft isa viable option for these patients. This review of our experience at this institution is one of the largest reviews available for this indication.
Methods:This retrospective review evaluated the patient's who had graft/fistula placed at our institution since 2009. We were able to identify 25 patients. We then performed chart review and were able to evaluate these fistulas and grafts with our primary endpoint being primary patency and secondary patency as well as other complications associated with vascular access placement.
Results: We present the summative data of our experience placing permanent vascular access in this patient subgroup.
Conclusions: We submit that placing long-term vascular access in these patients may be a viable option. This may be superior to implanted ports and tunneled infusion lines. Further study of direct comparison between these means is needed to prove superiority however we believe that our experience could be generalized for this purpose. 
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