Written and maintained by CASRAI Editorial Board
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Drainage catheters are not one product category — they are several distinct device families that happen to share a name, and a stocking formulary built around one family’s specs is often wrong for another. A closed-suction wound drain, a percutaneous biliary drainage catheter, and an indwelling urinary catheter solve different clinical problems, connect to different collection systems, and follow different sizing and documentation conventions. This guide is written for hospital and clinic procurement, materials-management, and central-supply staff building or auditing a drainage-catheter formulary — what the major device families are, how they are sized and specified, and what a facility needs to document and track for each. It is deliberately limited to procurement and stocking: it does not cover clinical placement, site selection, insertion technique, or ongoing drain management. Those are physician and clinician decisions made at the bedside or in interventional radiology, governed by the patient’s clinical picture — not a supply-chain judgment call, and outside what this page is positioned to advise on.
Where to source this: LAC, CASRAI’s sister medical-supply business, stocks a drainage catheters category spanning several of the device families discussed below, for facilities evaluating vendors while building or revising a formulary.
Scope: A Procurement Guide, Not a Clinical One
Everything below addresses what to have on hand and how to document it — device families, sizing conventions, material and packaging specs, and traceability recordkeeping. It deliberately stops short of clinical guidance: which drain to place for a given surgical site, how deep to advance a percutaneous catheter, when to remove a drain, or how to manage output volumes are all decisions that belong to the treating clinician or interventionalist, made against the individual patient, not a procurement standard. Where a stocking decision and a clinical decision genuinely overlap — for example, which French-size range a facility should keep in par stock — this guide addresses the supply-side half (what range covers the requests a service line actually generates) and defers the clinical half (which size a specific patient needs) to ordering clinicians.
The Drainage Catheter Families
For stocking purposes, drainage catheters split into two functional groups that rarely share SKUs, vendors, or reorder logic:
- Closed-suction and passive wound/surgical drains — placed in a surgical or traumatic wound bed or body cavity to evacuate fluid/blood/serous drainage during postoperative healing. Includes active closed-suction systems (Jackson-Pratt, Hemovac) and passive open drains (Penrose).
- Percutaneous organ-drainage catheters — placed into a specific organ or duct system to relieve obstruction or divert fluid on an ongoing basis. Includes urinary drainage devices (indwelling/Foley, suprapubic) and biliary drainage catheters (percutaneous transhepatic biliary drains, T-tubes), with nephrostomy catheters following a closely related design and sizing pattern.
The two groups differ enough in intended dwell time, collection-system design, and placement setting that most facilities stock and reorder them through separate supply lines — surgical/OR supply for wound drains, and urology or interventional-radiology supply for organ-drainage catheters — even though both show up under a single “drainage catheter” search in a GPO catalog.
Closed-Suction and Passive Wound Drains
Jackson-Pratt (JP) drains use a flexible, fenestrated flat or round drain tube connected to a compressible bulb (“grenade”) reservoir; compressing the bulb creates gentle continuous suction that re-establishes as the bulb slowly re-expands while it fills. Reservoir capacities commonly stocked range from roughly 100 mL bulbs for smaller wound beds up to 400–600 mL bulbs for larger cavities. Hemovac drains use the same closed-suction principle with a spring-loaded, accordion-style flat reservoir instead of a bulb, typically at a larger capacity (often 500–800 mL) — common in orthopedic and larger general-surgery wound beds where output volume runs higher. Penrose drains are a passive design by contrast: a soft, flat, open latex or silicone tube with no reservoir and no suction, relying on gravity and capillary action to wick fluid out along the tube’s length onto an external dressing. Because a Penrose drain has no closed collection system, it is generally reserved for lower-output or superficial-drainage indications (e.g., localized abscess drainage) rather than major wound beds, and facilities standardizing away from latex should confirm a silicone Penrose option is stocked as the substitute, not just noted as unavailable.
Drain tubing on closed-suction systems is typically sized in French (Fr), most commonly in the roughly 7–19 Fr range, with flatter, wider channels on the larger sizes intended for higher-viscosity or higher-volume output. See Wound and Surgical Irrigation Supplies: Selection Guide for the adjacent decision of how a wound bed is irrigated before and around drain placement.
Urinary and Biliary Drainage Catheters
Urinary drainage devices — indwelling (Foley) catheters, suprapubic catheters, and external/condom catheters — are their own deep selection topic with their own French-size conventions, coating options, and CAUTI-prevention considerations; this guide does not re-derive that logic. See Urinary Catheter Types and Selection: A Clinical Buyer’s Guide for the full breakdown, and the CAUTI Prevention Bundle guide for the closed-drainage-system maintenance practices a stocked formulary needs to support. One stocking distinction worth flagging here: a suprapubic catheter is placed percutaneously through the abdominal wall rather than the urethra, and its insertion kit, dressing supplies, and securement devices resemble a percutaneous access kit far more than a standard urethral Foley kit — facilities sometimes stock it under urology supply rather than general catheter stock, and it is worth confirming which line actually carries it before an order gets missed.
Biliary drainage catheters are placed percutaneously (typically by interventional radiology, via a transhepatic approach) to relieve biliary obstruction, either draining externally to a bag, internally past the obstruction into the bowel, or both (“internal-external”). Most are supplied as locking pigtail catheters — the distal end forms a retention coil once a locking suture or stylet mechanism is released, which resists dislodgement without a balloon — commonly stocked in the roughly 8–14 Fr range for adult use, with radiopaque markers along the shaft for fluoroscopic placement and position confirmation. A T-tube (Kehr tube) is an older, surgically placed biliary drain used after open common bile duct exploration; it remains in some formularies for cases where a surgical (rather than percutaneous) approach is used, though percutaneous techniques have reduced its overall volume. Nephrostomy catheters follow a closely related design (locking pigtail, similar French range, radiopaque markers) for percutaneous kidney drainage, and facilities that stock a biliary drainage kit line frequently stock nephrostomy kits alongside it from the same vendor for exactly that reason.
Sizing and Material Conventions Across Families
Every drainage catheter family above is sized in the French scale (1 Fr ≈ 0.33 mm outer diameter), the same convention used for IV catheters and venipuncture needles — see IV Catheter Gauge Selection for how French and gauge conventions relate on the vascular-access side. Beyond diameter, a stocking formulary should track:
- Material — medical-grade silicone (softer, more biocompatible, standard for longer-dwell percutaneous catheters) versus PVC or latex (lower cost, shorter intended dwell, and a real allergy consideration — confirm latex-free options are stocked as the default or clearly flagged alternative).
- Radiopacity — percutaneous organ-drainage catheters need a radiopaque line or marker band for fluoroscopic or CT-guided placement and follow-up imaging; wound drains generally do not.
- Collection-system compatibility — connector/adapter fit between the catheter and its bag, canister, or wall-suction line varies by manufacturer; a formulary switch on one component (e.g., a new drainage bag vendor) can silently orphan compatible catheters already in stock if connectors are not cross-checked first.
- Sterility and single-use status — virtually all drainage catheters in this category are supplied sterile and single-use (terminally sterilized, typically by ethylene oxide or gamma irradiation); reprocessing is not standard practice for this device class, and a formulary should not treat any of them as reusable stock.
Documentation and Traceability for Institutional Stocking
Drainage catheters are regulated medical devices, and most fall under the FDA’s Unique Device Identification (UDI) system (21 CFR Part 801, Subpart B): device labeling carries a UDI encoding a fixed Device Identifier (DI, specific to model/manufacturer) plus variable Production Identifiers (lot or batch number, expiration date, and sometimes a serial number), issued through an accredited issuing agency (commonly GS1 or HIBCC) and readable as a barcode. UDI compliance was phased in by device class over several years, with essentially the full device population — including the class I/II devices most drainage catheters fall under — covered by the mid-2020s. For institutional stocking, the practical implications are:
- Lot and expiration tracking — every sterile single-use catheter carries a lot number and expiration date that should be captured at receiving, not just read at the point of use, so a manufacturer recall can be matched against on-hand and already-used stock without a manual shelf search.
- Recall readiness — percutaneous drainage catheters (biliary, nephrostomy) and their delivery systems have been subject to real device recalls industry-wide over the years; a formulary that can pull “every lot of product X received in the last N months” quickly, rather than reconstructing it from packing slips, is the operational difference between a fast, contained recall response and a slow one.
- UDI capture at the point of use — for percutaneous and implant-adjacent devices, many facilities scan the UDI into the patient record at placement (supply-chain and clinical documentation converge here); confirm the receiving/inventory system’s barcode format matches what’s actually printed on the catheter packaging before assuming scan-based tracking will work out of the box.
- Quality-system alignment — manufacturers of these device classes operate under ISO 13485-aligned quality systems (FDA’s Quality System Regulation, 21 CFR Part 820, is itself harmonized to ISO 13485); a facility’s own device-traceability recordkeeping (lot capture, complaint logging, corrective-action follow-through) is the downstream half of that same chain, not a separate obligation invented by the hospital.
Building a Stocking Formulary
A workable drainage-catheter formulary generally covers, per family, a small number of French sizes spanning the range a facility’s actual case mix generates — rather than every size a catalog offers — plus confirmed-compatible collection bags/canisters, and a rotation discipline (first-expired-first-out, FEFO) for sterile stock with a defined shelf life. Par levels are best set per service line (OR/surgical supply for wound drains; urology and IR supply for organ-drainage catheters) rather than as one facility-wide catheter par, since the two groups’ usage patterns, case volumes, and reorder cadence rarely track together. Backup stock for a second material option (silicone alongside PVC, latex-free as the confirmed default) avoids a scramble when a single-vendor allergy or supply interruption hits.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between a Jackson-Pratt drain and a Hemovac drain?
Both are closed-suction wound drains that work on the same principle — a compressible reservoir creates gentle continuous suction as it re-expands. A Jackson-Pratt uses a bulb (“grenade”) reservoir, typically at smaller capacities; a Hemovac uses a spring-loaded flat accordion reservoir, typically at larger capacities, and is more common on higher-output wound beds such as orthopedic surgery.
Is a Penrose drain a closed-suction drain?
No. A Penrose drain is a passive, open drain with no reservoir and no suction — it relies on gravity and capillary action to wick fluid along the tube onto an external dressing. Jackson-Pratt and Hemovac drains are the closed-suction category; Penrose is a separate, passive design.
What French sizes are typical for percutaneous biliary drainage catheters?
Adult biliary drainage catheters are most commonly stocked in roughly the 8–14 Fr range, usually as locking pigtail catheters. The specific size for a given patient is a clinical decision made by the placing interventionalist, not a procurement determination — the range above describes what a formulary typically needs to have on hand, not what any individual patient needs.
Do drainage catheters need to be tracked by lot number and UDI?
Yes, as a matter of both regulatory labeling (the FDA’s UDI system applies to most device classes in this category) and sound recall-readiness practice. Capturing lot number, expiration date, and UDI at receiving — not just at the point of use — is what lets a facility respond quickly if a specific lot is recalled.
Are drainage catheters reusable?
No. Virtually all drainage catheters in this category — wound drains and percutaneous organ-drainage catheters alike — are supplied sterile and labeled single-use. Reprocessing is not standard practice for this device class.
