The use of a femoral arterial cannula for effective dilation for percutaneous femoral venous cannulation.

We present a technique for percutaneous femoral venous cannulation for initiation of cardiopulmonary bypass in the setting of previous femoral vessel exposure in which previous scarring prevents safe dilation of the subcutaneous tissues using standard techniques. The technique presented may be particularly helpful when redo sternotomy is deemed hazardous and cardiopulmonary bypass is judged mandatory prior to redo sternotomy. The patient presented in this paper had two previous cardiac operations with prior surgical exposure of femoral vessels in whom institution of cardiopulmonary bypass prior to sternotomy was of paramount importance due to a 7-cm ascending aortic aneurysm.