Oops, you guys really need to look better. Phenylephrine can extravasate and not much will happen; there are a handful of case reports in the last 50-70 years. If norepi extravasates, it can be a tragedy, and there are many more than 1-2 case reports. I am a big fan of peripheral pressors, but it takes some well-placed IVs in closely-monitored big veins with long catheters and phentolamine (and/or nitroglycerine, or terbutaline and other vasodilators) immediately available at bedside, to avoid serious complications.
This is one of the recent studies showing that it can be done:
Safety of peripheral intravenous administration of vasoactive medication. - PubMed - NCBI , but they had an excellent protocol which involved everybody in the ICU (residents, nurses, pharmacy etc.).
And this is the largest review to date on the subject:
Mythbuster: Administration of Vasopressors Through Peripheral Intravenous Access - R.E.B.E.L. EM - Emergency Medicine Blog . The important part:
"
Results:
- 85 articles with 270 patients and 325 separate local tissue injury and extravasation events included
- 318 events were from PIV administration
- 204 local tissue injury events (179 skin necrosis, 5 tissue necrosis, and 20 gangrene)
- 85.3% of adverse events occurred from PIVs located at sites distal to antecubital or popliteal fossae
- 96.8% of adverse events occurred after 4 hrs of infusion from PIV
- Major disability and mortality in 9 (4.4%) and 4 (2.2%) of cases respectively
- 114 extravasation events
- 75.4% did not result in any tissue injury
- 75% of adverse events were distal to antecubital and popliteal fossae
- Major disability 3 cases (2.7%), and mortality 1 case (0.9%)
- 7 events were from CVC administration
- 4 local tissue injury events (3 skin necrosis & 1 gangrene)
- Long-term sequelae 3 cases and minor disability 2 cases
- Mortality in 1 case
- 3 extravasation events
When it happens, it looks ugly like here:
Well recognised but still overlooked: norepinephrine extravasation -- Kim et al. 2012 -- BMJ Case Reports
Just Google "norepinephrine extravasation", and look at the Images, and you'll find a number of scary ones. I have seen one of these extravasations myself, and the patient was screaming in pain.
It is true that most case reports are from back when they used to run elephant doses of norepi (70-100 mcg/min) for days in the ICU. I would say that running norepi through a PIV for a few hours, especially in the OR (or any other closely-monitored setting), should be fine, but please do realize the potential for harm. I wouldn't do it in some community hospital that doesn't have an IV team specialized in treating extravasations immediately. Epi (or dopamine) isn't much different
at pressor doses. The drugs that can be always run peripherally are the inodilators.
Btw, I have personally used peripheral pressors for mild sepsis for less than a day, so I am all for it, whenever possible. Many of the problems result from not noticing that the IV is getting infiltrated, or from using short (less than 2 inch-long) catheters with poor IV placement technique (through and through, or other damage to the vein) and slow flowing IV, where the pressor can leak back to the insertion site and through the hole on the posterior wall of the vein.
for this one: 
