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THINKING OF BUYING …
Ashish Sinha, MD, PhD, DABA
Vein-Finding Technology
Wouldn't it be nice to visualize the vessels beneath the skin?
S
tarting
A BETTER WAY With practice, we learn how to visualize
and palpate veins on the skin's surface, but wouldn't it be
an IV
better if you could see beneath the skin's surface?
line is
not without
its challenges. But
as you'll see
over the
next couple
pages, a
handful of
manufacturers have introduced devices that let you visualize the vessels beneath
the skin when starting IVs. With these advances, you can gain access
to veins that aren't otherwise visible or palpable, without the need for
interventional radiology services. This ability to visualize what's
beneath the skin when starting IVs can boost your providers' firststick success, improve your facility's pre-op efficiency — particularly
among difficult-access patients — and, perhaps most importantly,
reduce your patients' discomfort.
These easy-to-use technologies use infrared light, near-infrared light,
LEDs or ultrasound; the principles of absorption and reflection; and
real-time computerized analysis to project images of what's inside.
Nurses and anesthesia providers can identify pitfalls in and verify the
potency of the vascular structure, often up to 1cm deep.
With practice we learn how to visualize and palpate veins on the
skin's surface. But sometimes what feels like a vein may be a different
structure, wasting time and effort. Or we access a vein and obtain a
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O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | J A N U A R Y 2014
