Intravenous IV Tubing Organizer BME 200 300 University of Wisconsin Madison October 10 2003 Team Amit Mehta April Zehm Client Timothy E Corden M D Medical Director Pediatric Critical Care Unit UW Children s Hospital Advisor Willis Tompkins University of Wisconsin Department of Biomedical Engineering 0 Problem Statement The goal of this project is to create an intravenous IV tubing organizer to prevent entanglement of several IV lines while maintaining the functionality of each IV tube This device should ultimately eliminate the hazard caused by multiple IV lines for pediatric patients and at the same time improve hospital efficiency Background Information An intravenous IV tube is a soft flexible catheter of which one end is inserted into a vein to deliver medication fluids or nutrition It can also be used to remove blood for sampling An IV is commonly inserted into a vein in the lower arm or wrist IVs are most often used in the hospital but can also be used in the home for short term therapy An IV is usually left in for just a few days but may be kept in for a longer time Discovery Health 2003 IV tubes can be used for numerous purposes such as administering medication hydrating a person who is unable to obtain nutrition orally replacing fluids lost through vomiting surgery or injury giving blood transfusions or blood products and drawing blood samples Discovery Health 2003 The IV tubes are attached at one end to an electronic syringe pump and the other end is attached to the patient The syringe pump ejects a precise quantity of medication through the IV tube and into the patient Hospitals including the UW Children s Hospital use IV tubes to administer medication to pediatric patients Our client represents the children s critical unit of the UW Hospital which means that the pediatric patients often have numerous IV tubes attached to their limbs up to 8 to 10 lines at a time Since there is one syringe pump per each IV line multiple lines can potentially cause confusion and make it difficult to differentiate between separate lines Furthermore since each 1 IV tube is 1mm in diameter and 2 5 meters long it is very easy to get them tangled This is especially the case when multiple IV tubes become intertwined Hospital personnel refer to this entanglement as spaghetti Spaghetti is especially problematic during the transport of a patient within the hospital During this critical time the IV tubing must be easily accessible and organized so staff can immediately locate and correct a problem should one arise Currently massive amounts of jumbled tubing on the patient s bed during transport makes this event dangerous Even while the patient is stationary loose IV tubing can be hazardous Accidentally stepping on the tubing can cause kinking which consequently stops the flow of vital nutrients and or drugs Tripping on the excess tubing can also rip the IV out of a patient which aside from preventing flow to the patient can be extremely painful Pediatric patients in particular are at a high risk posed by spaghetti simply because of their small size There have been reports of infant strangulation suffocation and even death due to the entanglement of IV tubing CMAJ 2002 By designing a device that can separate multiple IV lines as well as minimize disorder doctors and nurses can place more emphasis on the patient rather than spending time untangling the IV tubes The client is interested in a double ended spring loaded device with tape measurer like capabilities However this is not a mandatory requirement In addition to reeling in tubing the device should have some organizational features It should distinctly separate or identify multiple tubes possibly via color coding Patent Search Further research followed in the form of patent searches to identify any products already in existence that were similar or identical to the one the team was trying to design This was 2 accomplished via the United States Patent Office USPTO 2003 The most closely related device found was an IV line separation system which separates various IV lines from different sources prior to reaching the patient A device that dispenses IV tubes via a spring loaded system does not exist at the present time An alternative option is to use the rewinding mechanism of a tape measurer as a springboard idea A patent was found of a tape measurer having a quick rewinding mechanism that incorporated gears rather than a spring system This idea will become the basis of one of the possible design options later in this report Design Constraints There were a number of issues the team had to keep firmly in mind when designing the IV tubing organizer Due to the unique nature of the environment in which the organizer will reside there were several special requirements that needed to be considered First and foremost the safety of the patient cannot be overly stressed It is important to be sure that this device does not cause any discomfort to the patient such as pulling on the IV tubing Furthermore the device must be small and mobile Since the IV tubing itself accompanies a patient in transport so must the organizing device Most equipment is placed directly on the patient s bed prior to translocation so the device must be relatively lightweight The device should be as discrete as possible as requested by the client While the device itself does not need to be sanitary it must be disposable in accordance with hospital sanitation regulations The device will be thrown away following the discharge of a single patient However since IV tubing sometimes must be changed every few days which often precedes a patient s length of stay the device must be re loadable It may be reused for one patient 3 The functionality of the IV tube cannot be compromised since the IV tubing will be in use within the device For this reason it must not allow kinking or tearing of the tubing The device should smoothly let out a line when needed and retract and store excess line when not in use Ideally the tubing could be adjustable from either direction so that both the end leading to the pump and the end directed toward the patient could be altered independently of one another Since the target audience consists of critically ill patients in a hospital the device s interaction with an MRI machine must also be taken into consideration The device will accompany a patient to the MRI room Therefore iron or any other magnetic material must not be used in manufacturing this product Doing
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