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I have been placing PICCs for 15 years and have done well over 12,000 PICCs. In addition I have cared for and maintained at least double that amount of PICC dressings in all healthcare settings. I have used just about every dressing kit on the market, as well as numerous transparent dressings. I have used the stat-lock, bio-patch, and Chloroprep since they have been introduced into the healthcare industry.

I have been doing care and maintenance of a PICC line for a private 35 year old, male, home care patient with Lyme's disease, since May 2008. After a few months he started to develop skin sensitivity. I started deleting one of the above items one by one, in an attempt to evaluate which one was causing the skin irritation and breakdown. I also tried at least six (6) different transparent dressings. I was changing the dressing every 3-4 days, but the patient continued to develop skin irritation. I stopped using Chloroprep and went to the alcohol/betadine antiseptic, of which the betadine helped in drying up the irritation. The area under the dressing had developed a small pustule type rash. When I stopped using the bio-patch, the red circle indentation surrounding the insertion site cleared up. I tried a gauze dressing and then a telfa dressing, with less of a rash, but still changing the dressing every 3-4 days. Even the area under the stat-lock developed small pustules. Finally, we had to remove the PICC (all cultures were negative), to ensure that no secondary infection developed.

Interesting at this time, I received a call from the Tri-State rep, Darrell Troisi, whom I had recently encountered.

He informed me of the new dressing that his company would have available in the immediate future, SorbaView SHIELD. I explained what was happening with my home PICC patient. He was able to acquire a few samples to send me for this patient. I started using this dressing, without the Chloroprep, BioPatch and StatLock, and within a week to ten days the site was totally free of any skin irritation, as well as no migration of the PICC. (In spite of the diagnosis of this patient, depending on his energy level, he is quite active). We are now able to change the dressing on a weekly basis and the skin still looks as good as it did after the PICC was placed.

Previously, I had to restrict this patient from any kind of exercising, due to the moisture being created under the various dressings, which I felt had contributed to the rash. He was very careful and rarely ever got his dressing damp when showering. With this dressing in place, the dressing stayed very secure due to the design of the product and the material that was used. This product has afforded him to be more active, as well as not developing a rash under the PICC dressing. We have been very pleased with the outcome and securement of this product and have been using the SorbaView SHIELD since the end of December 2008. We are slowly introducing the use of the Chloroprep and Bio-patch back into the dressing change.

I have been pleased and grateful that we have found a product that has been so effective for this patient. I want to thank Darrel Troisi for the SorbaView SHIELD samples and introducing me to this product in order to benefit my patient, who has encountered so many problems with the other dressings. This is a product that I would recommend for a patient with a PICC dressing.