We hope the time for practitioners occasionally involved in delicate implantation procedures, whose performance is characterized by relative care and limited knowledge, 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 technological 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.