5 Devices Taking the Pain Out of IV Placement

IV placements have long been the bane of many a care provider’s existence. Learn what new devices have made the process much more pain free for both patients and staff.

While it is no doubt one of the most common procedures in the hospital, the insertion and placement of intravenous catheters can still be a tricky process, even for veteran nurses.

Luckily, whether for hydration or medication, there are a whole host of new technologies, medical computers, and hand-held devices that are looking to give nurses a leg-up.

1. Traditional Ultrasound-Guided IV Insertion

Ultrasound-guided IVs use ultrasound to map the veins of the patient and provide a clear path to the best candidates for catheter insertion. It’s not foolproof, and mistakes can be made, but it’s generally tried-and-true and a solid choice for many IV placements that would be otherwise quite difficult.

In fact, a study found that the success rate of IV placement improved by 16% because of ultrasound-guided IV placement, from a success rate of 64% using traditional methods all the way up to 80% for ultrasound.

2. Portable Ultrasound Devices

There are even smaller, more easy-to-handle ultrasound devices on the way. The EchoNous, approved by the FDA in 2018, uses a compact form and cutting edge technology to accurately image veins with just the push of a button.

Other portable systems, like the Philips Lumify or the Butteryfly iQ, actually make use of existing medical tablets and even mobile phones for imaging and display. The Lumify is an ultrasound probe that connects to the medical tablet PC via USB. Once connected, and the application downloaded, the Lumify can be used for many ultrasound purposes, namely ultrasound-guided IV insertion.

3. Making Veins Larger and More Visible

Devices like Veinplicity use electrical impulses to increase blood flow to an area. This increased blood flow causes the veins in the forearm to plump up, not only making them easier to see, but physically easier to stick.

Devices like AccuVein, on the other hand, use lasers to penetrate the skin of the patient. The skin and muscles reflect light well, but the hemoglobin in blood tends to absorb light. This, in turn, causes the veins to appear as very dark shadows against the illuminated skin of the patient, making it obvious where to insert an IV.

Preliminary studies by the University of Massachusetts Medical School show that the Accuvein laser device increased the two-stick success rate of obese female patients from 50% to a whopping 96%

4. IV Safety Administration Solutions

Most hospitals in the US have implemented “smart” infusion pumps with dose error reduction software (DERS) to increase IV safety administration; in fact, the BD Alaris™ System was the first infusion pump to offer this protection. Like the name suggests, DERS allows infusion pumps to warn users of incorrect medication orders, calculation errors or misprogramming events that would result in a significant under or over-delivery of a drug or fluid – potentially resulting in patient harm or death if not caught.

Additionally, the BD Alaris System can wirelessly connect with the Electronic Medical Record (EMR), seamlessly feeding IV information from the pump back to the EHR. This reduces both the need for manual documentation of that information as well as potential programming errors.

5. Real-Time Vascular Projection

Technology like the “Vein Viewer” is something of a combination between the on-the-skin laser imaging of Accuvein with the real-time under-skin imaging of an ultrasound device.

The Vein Viewer uses infrared technology to penetrate the skin, which then creates a solid map of the interior of the arm’s vascular system. It then gathers this data and projects the map right onto the patient’s skin. The patient and clinician can then see a real-time scan of the patient’s veins, without the bulk or screen of a traditional ultrasound device.

Reducing IV Anxiety

As you can see, the issue of IV anxiety and difficult sticks is fairly universal, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many solution ideas popping out of the weeds.

To learn more about the kind of medical computers and medical grade tablets that can make life in the hospital easier, contact Cybernet today.