Cancer patients received a boost following the launch yesterday of a video which explains how to look after some of the specialised equipment used by patients during treatment.
Learning Your Lines is a video guide put together by Dr Alan McShane, a consultant anaesthetist at St Vincent's Hospital, Dublin. With funding from the Irish Cancer Society, he and two oncology nurse specialists, Tanya King and Mary Quinn, have produced an aid for patients who need to use a central venous catheter called a Hickman.
Hickman catheters are placed in a central vein in the chest to allow repeated pain-free blood-sampling. Chemotherapy drugs are also administered using the device, which must remain in place for weeks or even months.
The catheter means that cancer patients who require repeated blood tests are not being continually needled. Anti-cancer drugs also tend to block peripheral veins, so the Hickman permits their pain-free administration.
The video, which was made with the help of two cancer patients in St Vincent's, is aimed at demystifying the concept of central catheters. Dr McShane hopes it will give people confidence so that they can get maximum benefit from it.
"While in hospital patients do receive teaching on the management of their catheters. But this video allows them to hear the messages again in their own time. The idea is to make people comfortable and relaxed with a Hickman," he said.
Copies of the video and an explanatory booklet can be obtained by telephoning the Department of Anaesthesia at St Vincent's University Hospital at 01-2094262.