Introduction:

The Intravenous Therapy sets in important therapeutic and diagnosis procedure, widely used by nursing profesionals in a hospital care. This procedure has a high risk in short term and the possibility of secondary complications related to health problems derived from this therapy.

Objective:

To identify the prevalence and associated factors to local complications of peripheral intravenous therapy in patients institutionalized in a medical clinic and neurological department of a public teaching hospital.

Methods:

This is a cross-sectional, exploratory and descriptive study, with a quantitative approach with systematic observation and search on secondary data, available in the medical records of 63 patients institutionalized in a public teaching hospital. Data were collected from January to March 2015 and submitted to statistical analysis using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, version 19.0.

Results:

The prevalence of phlebitis was 25.4 %, of infiltration 15.9 % and 11.1 % of hematoma. Most patients in the study were in therapy at the maximum interval of 48 hours. At the time of observation, the catheters were mostly connected to polifix (n = 58; 92.1 %). Regarding specific symptoms were identified edema, pain, discomfort and erythema around the catheter insertion in 16 (25.4 %) participants.

Conclusion:

The prevalence of complications of intravenous therapy was high, especially phlebitis, infiltration and hematoma. There were differences between the prevalence rates for clinics, related to the exchange intervals, and type of peripheral inserted catheter.

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