Introduction

The pulmonary artery flotation catheter carries a lot of similar complications to any typical central vascular access procedure. The big ones come from the fact that you are trying to place the catheter through the heart rather than just get the tip in close proximity to it. Perforation is of course a real possibility with this, but perhaps more likely are the nasty arrhythmias that are precipitated by the catheter irritating the myocardium. There are lots of good materials online in terms of the actual videos, for example of how to actually put the thing in.