A catheter-guided insertion of Pacifico's venous cannula

Direct caval cannulation using a Pecifico's cannula has become popular in open heart surgery. However, the cannulation is often difficult especially in pediatric cases because of the right-angled, blunt and large metal tip of the catheter. To resolve this problem, we introduced a catheter-guided insertion of the cannula using an intratracheal suction catheter (IZUMO Health, Nagano, Japan) of an appropriate size as a guiding catheter. With this technique, no special skills are necessary to establish direct caval cannulation.