Mal-positioning of a dialysis catheter: One lumen with arterial blood and the other with venous blood?

Abstract

Partial anomalous pulmonary vein drainage is a rare congenital defect, where the pulmonary vein drains into a systemic vein instead of draining into the left atrium. We present a case of a 63-year-old woman on hemodialysis who was found to have a right pulmonary vein with anomalous drainage to the superior vena cava after mal-positioning of a dialysis catheter, which demonstrated unexpected blood results from the different lumina of the catheter. Multiple imaging techniques were used to deal with this rare clinical situation. This is the first case reporting a mal-positioning of a left-side internal jugular vein tunneled catheter into a right-side pulmonary vein.