Venous access A practical textbook

We hope the time for practitioners occasionally involved in delicate implantation
procedures, whose performance is characterized by relative care and limited knowl-
edge, often restrained to a few notions acquired back in the training days never to
be verified nor updated, is finally over. We welcome the time when venous access
is to be performed by multi-professional teams of properly trained experts, who are
finally empowered to play their crucial role with dedication and care, supported by
valuable operational instruments (algorithms for the selection of the appropriate
device, implantation protocols, management protocols and so on) complying with
in-house company procedures and yet based on scientific evidence inferred from
the existing international guidelines and other evidence-based documents.
This textbook is aimed at defining, at least temporarily, the scientific and techno-
logical level of development achieved by the working teams in our medical centers,
in the field of central venous access implantation and management. Though aware
of the fact that technological progress in the field is such that even the most up-to-
date textbook might soon enough be looked at as obsolete, we would like to deliver
our strong feeling about the existence of a working method, a clinical approach that
shall no longer be based on personal ideas or notions inherited by older colleagues,
but rather on efficacy- and safety-oriented scientific evidence.