Currently there is a growth in the use of extravascular catheter as a procedure worldwide, mainly due to the expansion of work in critical care. Cuba does not escape to such a scale???? In Cuba an observational, descriptive, cross-sectional study of the procedure in use has been conducted at the Intensive Care Unit of the Dr. Mario Muñoz Monroy University Hospital in Colón, Matanzas. The investigation, which aimed to identify factors that could reduce the incidence of sepsis secondary during this procedure. ran from January to December 2007 and focused on 143 patients, predominantly aged 45 to 70, requiring a deep venous approach. The most frequent causes that had led to the use of the procedure here was the administration of drugs and parenteral solutions while the largest number of patients used central venous catheterization for between 7 and 10 days. The most frequent complication was procedural sepsis from which thirty patients died. The Chi Square of independence methodology was applied to test the hypothesis that no differences existed across the proposed qualitative variables of age, causes of deep venous approach, time of use, more frequent complications and state at discharge.
