ice vs no ice with cardiac outputs

anotherRNinCali · Jun 21, 2002

No ice in our unit either.

BadBird, BSN, RN · Jun 29, 2002

No ice in one hospital I work, and a continuous cardiac output in another. I have never used ice in 8 years of nursing.

EricaCCRN · Jul 26, 2002

CC NRSE....are you frequently calibrating your SVO2 monitors? If not, maybe that's why they are not accurate.

As for the ice vs no ice.....haven't used ice since I was a student 5 years ago. Now, either use no ice (if bolus method) or Baxter CCO. Have worked as a traveler/agency in almost 12 hospitals & have never seen ice.

TraumaNurse · Jan 23, 2003

Room temperature is sufficient....ice went out years ago! Almost 10 years and almost as many hospitals and I have only used ice once for an old cardiac surgeon who had to have everything his way! We use CCO now, but even when we have used the old set-up, we just use room temp.

RNforLongTime · Jan 24, 2003

We use room temp, NSS and use Edwards swans

RNforLongTime · Jan 24, 2003

Only the intensivists and Trauma Surgeons use the CCO Swans which are also Edwards. In our CABG pt', the Swans are left in for such a short period of time that it isn't worth the cosst.

dv8rn · Jan 25, 2003

We use Baxter CCO too. If I mention ice around here, the new kids look at me like I've grown another head!!

zambezi, BSN, RN · Mar 9, 2003

no ice, continuous svo2...

CCL"Babe", BSN, RN · Mar 9, 2003

Some Doctors insist on refrigerated NSS, some are happy with room temp. Really have never seen a differrence.

Going80INA55 · Mar 9, 2003

No Ice for us either.

Maybe she needs to update her lecture.

Gardengal · Mar 9, 2003

Haven't routinely used ice since the 80s when it was found to not be necessary. On rare occasion in the summer though if there's a big temperature change outside to >90 reallyrapidly the hospital ventilation system takes a while to equilibrate.

In some rooms with lots of machinery which produce heat, and a cold patient (ie sepsis with hypothermia and using a bear hugger to warm them ) the body temperature is too close to the injectate temperature and we need to chill the fluid. This happens pretty rarely, so when it happens there are sometimes issues. for instance, the computation constant needs to be changed for different temperatures of injectate and sometimes that's forgotten. We seem to do best in these situations when we just chill a 100cc bag of NSS in the refrigerator briefly so that the temperature is still in the range of our usual computation constant. I've found that abou 15 minutes in the frig works great.

NurseGirlKaren · Mar 10, 2003

As long as the fluid that the thermistor is stuck in (outside of the body) and the injectate is the same temperature, it shouldn't be a problem, right?

We don't use iced outputs in our hospital's critical care unit or in the cath lab.