Clinical experience with a sucking sump catheter in the treatment of esophageal atresia.

This is an introduction to the sucking sump catheter as a method of continuous salivary suction from the oral cavity for the treatment of esophageal atresia and other diseases. Upper pouch suction on many occasions is not easy. The double lumen catheter was devised by Replogle to achieve better suction efficiency, but this is not always satisfactory. Therefore, we devised an oral suction catheter that is a sucking sump catheter. A no. 8 French Argyle Salem sump catheter was transformed; we added five to six holes, and the tip was bent into a double or triple circle. This is sucked on, as a nipple would be, by the infant. From 6 years of experience, we have determined that this works very well for continuous salivary aspiration from the oral cavity, that it causes no complications; this device can also contribute to early oral feeding after esophageal anastomosis.