Of course sorry for rushing through it.
An arterial line is like an IV (these go into veins) except it's in arteries and generally used for different purposes. They poke it with a needle then put a catheter (plastic usually) into the artery. The least invasive and most commonly used ones are at the wrist where you normally check your pulse also known as the radial artery. They are put in during surgeries on "high risk" patients and not generally used for normal healthy people unless it's a very complicated surgery.
Their intra-op purpose is for "real-time" blood pressure monitoring. Instead of waiting 1-5 mins or whatever interval for the BP cuff to inflate. They could catch the earliest signs of low or high blood pressure this way. And, if someone becomes very unstable they can keep a closer eye on how the patient is responding. So you can see all the benefits to having one.
That being said, they have a higher complication (running into issues) rate than IVs. The poke can cause a clot that blocks the artery, Can spasm the artery, can throw clots the the arteries "downstream" from the poke site killing the tissues, or can tear the wall causing some ballooning known as pseudoaneurysms, and can be a source of bleeding. So that's why they dont' just throw them into anyone. Many mastocytosis papers recommend having them for surgery. That being said, I have developed clotting, infections and reactions to every IV I've had, be it the foreign body or plastic or what's injected through it so when I discussed this with my mast cell docs the advice was to avoid the arterial line if possible. Us masto folk have a higher risk of vascular complications anytime a vessel is manipulated. So it was my instinct to avoid it. But I could understand why the people taking care of me would feel safer with it.
Can be a bit of a grey area depending on the situation.
Anyway, I've run into complications from mine--my radial(wrist) artery has clotted and I no longer have a wrist pulse. Could be worse though. Thankfully there are two main arteries to the hand (radial and ulnar) so when one goes, the other takes over, but you are more dependent on the one artery in that situation which can be a dicey situation if anything ever happens to that artery such as with age or a nearby broken bone etc
There is a small chance my body will breakdown the clot or whatever's going on and recanalize it long term. You could theoretically have a study of the hand arteries using x ray dye to see how it looks and give heparin or something if needed, but I am not going to get xray dye given that's how I ended up here! And don't want the complications of another procedure.
Hope that makes some sense. If it doesn't, just let me know and I'll try again
I keep rushing through so am probably too scattered.
Still overall could be SO much worse
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