PAWP

Specialties CCU

Published

Just curious, do very many facilities wedge anymore? I know this topic has been posted before, but it looks like the threads are several years old. We don't personally wedge at my hospital, but I'm curious as to whether it is still commonplace elsewhere. Our CT surgeons go by PAD, CI, and CVP.

Specializes in Cardiothoracic ICU.

Where i work, anesthesia does not even advance the PAC into a wedged position on insertion. Also you'd have to be pretty inattentive to not notice an accidental wedge; it looks nothing like a proper PA waveform.

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Specializes in ICU + Infection Prevention.
Where i work anesthesia does not even advance the PAC into a wedged position on insertion. Also you'd have to be pretty inattentive to not notice an accidental wedge; it looks nothing like a proper PA waveform.[/quote']

And yet... it has happened either by a balloon left up or somehow the cath advanced to stuck-in-wedge.

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Specializes in Surgery, Trauma, Medicine, Neuro ICU.

Our CT surgery patients NEVER get wedged. Our CT docs use the PA pressures and CVP to look at volume status and CO and CI as well, though not as much.

Our medicine docs love the wedge. Mostly because they're dropping the swan for a completely different reason than the CT guys most of the time. we generally wedge once a shift. During the day it's usually during teaching rounds, and at night I would guess with their first assessment. Of course, if poo goes down...we'll wedge again if needed.

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