Central venous stenosis/occlusion in dialysis patients

This chapter describes our experience and literature review on central venous stenosis and occlusion in dialysis patients. The introduction discusses the incidence of central venous occlusive disease (CVOD) in end stage renal disease (ESRD) patients and its long term effects on the patency of dialysis access. The possible etiologic mechanisms, clinical presentation and the diagnostic studies available will be discussed next. In the final section we will describe our approach in treating CVOD and the reported experiences in the literature specific to each procedure. We conclude that CVOD is a devastating problem and the treatment should be individualized according to each patient’s clinical condition.