#Industry News
Clinical Application Value of Vein visualization in peripheral venipuncture
Peripheral venous puncture is one of the most common and widespread medical procedure performed on patients.
However, there are still some vein access challenges for this common procedure. Therefore, nowadays how to solve these problems becomes an important question. Infusion Nurses Society (INS) recommended in Infusion Therapy Standards of Practice 2016 the use of the vascular visualization technology for vascular access device (VAD) insertion, which could increase the success with peripheral cannulation and decrease the need for central vascular access device(CVAD).
Difficulties of venipuncture
Medical personnel may meet patients with different vascular conditions, and there are many factors that may lead to failure of venipuncture. To begin with, before the procedure, clinicians who are lack of experience or skills couldn’t evaluate accurately vessel conditions including appropriate vessel, size, depth, location and potential complications etc., so it's difficult for them to perform actions. Even the procedure is successful, some patients have poor vascular conditions or poor peripheral circulation, resulting in slow or no blood return. The inexperienced nurse may consider the venipuncture as a failure and try to do another attempt. Of course, the fixation methods after successful insertion are also vital, which may lead to displacement of needle, extravasation of the drug solution etc. Besides that, variant scenes, like crying babies or angry patients may produce more mental stress for nurses, which increase failure possibilities.
However, we couldn’t deny that difficult venous access is one of the most important reasons. First of all, the bad vascular condition may increase difficulties of insertion. For example, children’s vessels are usually small, narrowing, and deeply-located, the elderly possesses usually poor blood filling. And then, the invisibility of vessels caused by individual differences like fatty tissue or skin tone bring challenges to medical personnel. Furthermore, some diseases may lead to loss of peripheral venous access (PVA). For example, reduced vessel options due to blood loss, oncology, dehydration, hypertension etc.
Near-Infrared (NIR) VeinSight™ Vein Finder
VeinSight™ vein finder adopts the Near-infrared (NIR) technology to detect veins. It projects harmless near infrared light onto skin, the light will be absorbed by the hemoglobin (oxygen-carrying protein) within blood so there is a reduced amount of light reflection from the veins, but the light will be totally reflected by surrounding tissue. Differences light absorption rate of blood and body superficial tissue could be captured and analyzed. And then through the biological image processing system and identification technology, the device could map the image accurately on the surface of the skin, which makes it possible to visualize the vein in real time.
Besides, VeinSight™ vein detector use a certain wavelengths of DLP© projection technology, the infrared light source will not generate heat or harmful radiation, it is safe and reliable, which will cause no direct harm to the human eyes or any other parts; there is no direct contact with the patients when using the instrument, so it can avoid the risk of cross contamination.