Parenteral nutrition--ascites with acute renal failure as a complication from an umbilical venous catheter in an extremely low birth weight infant.

Umbilical venous catheters (UVCs) are frequently used in the neonatal intensive care setting and play a crucial role in the management of extremely low birth weight (ELBW) infants. One very rare complication reported is parenteral nutrition (PN) ascites secondary to vessel perforation or hepatic erosion by PN at the tip of malpositioned UVCs with various hepatic lesions. We describe a case of early onset PN ascites with no obvious associated hepatic lesion but complicated by pre-renal acute renal failure in an ELBW infant with the tip positioned between the 10th and 11th thoracic vertebrae.