What are your views on the safety of using a gripper system that due to manufacturing design allows blood to pool between the huber needle connecting onto the extn tubing, and that remains visible despite 40ml of saline flush and 2litres of TPN fluid over 10hrs.The blood settles there during withdrawal of the locking solution.
In theory the tubing is intact, so if the blood is clean and the TPN soln is clean, is it considered safe and to leave the needle in the port until the second feed or as recommended in the hospital policy only be changed every 5th day!
thanks in advance
Are you talking about at the Y-site and are you pulling the blood back to verify a blood return and then that is why it is there b/c if that is what is happening you can just pull back the blood to just before the Y-site. You have to think about this ahead of time so you can pull back in a slow steady and in a controlled fashion. If blood does get into the Y-site I just flush from the Y- site and I am able to clear the tubing.
No, its at the bend of the huber needle going into the extn tubing, the plain extn tubing is used to reduce the Y site pooling. and 6ml has to be withdrawn as the locking agent has the side effect of low calciums with cardiac arrest, if flushed forward in less than 15mins.
We use the gripper needle with the y-site and have experienced both.
Blood does get "caught" in the y-site and repetitive flushing between the proximal and distal connections to clear this out.
Blood also gets "stained" within the top portion of the actual needle (straight visible portion that the dressing covers). We just leave it. It's weird because it doesn't happen frequently but we do see it and do not see any other defects if that is what you'd call it.