[supermommy3]

Can anyone tell me what their unit guidelines/policy is on NGT placement and reinsertion for 30 day tubes. We recently switched to 30 day tubes and are having trouble keeping them in for any length of time especially with OGT and CPAP.

If your tube comes out after day 2,10 or 25 do you discard or rinse and reinsert?

[Sweeper933]

If ours come out before the 30 days is up, we are supposed to rinse them out with sterile water, then re-insert. However, if when we take them out, and they just look too gross, we toss them.

[grlgid]

Our policy for the NGT is if it's out throw it out and insert a new one. We tend to secure ours with either tegaderm or "Pink" tape. We still use daily change OGT for cpap so I can't help you out with that one.

There is a product that I picked up last year at a conference called "sticky whiskers" sorry I gave my sample to our RT supervisor (who promptly lost them grrr) so I can't tell you who makes them but they might work for holding the tubes in place a little longer. It basically was a piece of douderm/velcro combo with an extra piece of velcro material that you wrapped around the OGT/NGT/NC whatever you wanted to keep it in place.

Tina

[NICUandLearning]

we only keep our NGT/OGT in for 7 days but if they come out before that we discard and reinsert fresh. We use tegaderm to hold ours in place although steri-strips help hold one on the infants with wandering fingers.

[elizabells]

I'm fairly certain we don't even have a policy. My personal practice is to change the short ones we use for venting qday, and the long ones for feeds when they get gross or I'm not sure of placement. Some people change them the second they walk in the door each shift, even if you tell them "I just changed it at 0500" and it looks fine. I've never seen anyone rinse and replace. The only ones that get left in more than a few days are ND tubes, and if we were allowed to change them, I have no doubt they'd get replaced at least once per day. We have a lot of, um, my-way-or-the-highway divas on my unit...