oral care

Register Today!

  1. This is a discussion on oral care in NICU Nursing / Neonatal, part of Critical Care Nursing ... Since the disappearance of VAP-guard ...... what are other units using for oral care? It would...

    by Jul 3, '10
    Since the disappearance of VAP-guard ...... what are other units using for oral care?

    It would be great to make a survey -- we are sort of not doing anything but we are considering:
    (a) Normal Saline
    (b) Sterile Water
    (c) Breast Milk -- for those babies whose moms are pumping.

    None of the products being used in PICU have been tested on neonates -- so we have ruled those out. Thoughts? ......
    Read Online


    Print and share with friends and family.
    Compliments of allnurses.com.
    http://allnurses.com/showthread.php?t=489294

    by spacey Jul 3, '10 12:00 am
    ©2013 allnurses.com INC. All Rights Reserved.
  2. 3,422 Views
    Click Tags to Find Similar Topics

  3. 14 Comments so far...

  4. Jul 4, '10 by
    Upstate NY regional medical center

    sterile water
  5. Jul 5, '10 by
    We use the NS bullets that we also use to clean out our Ballards after suctioning. Typically we put just a tiny amount in the mouth to loosen the secretions and then use the nasal aspirator to suction it out. If we have a baby who is particularly gooey in the mouth, we will use the suction cathters (still using the NS bullets) to get more in the back of the mouth.
  6. Jul 6, '10 by
    We swab the mouths with these little pink-headed spungy swabs-on-a-stick, sort of lemon-y tasting...dip them in sterile water and swab the gunk away. Also suction with a typical oral suction thing-a-ma-bob.
  7. Jul 7, '10 by
    We use sterile water and a toothette or a guaze. and yuck to the saline bullets...would you want salt water in your mouth!

    We are looking into breastmilk for mouthcare too...that is going to be a PI project for our unit.
  8. Jul 13, '10 by
    We use Sage Oral care packets- it contains several swabs, mouth rinse (used on the swabs) and a mouth moisturizer. We have had really good success with this product.
  9. Aug 14, '10 by
    Children's Mercy KCMO
    Sterile water with mouth swabs and nasal aspirator
  10. Sep 2, '10 by
    Saline and sterile q-tips.
  11. Sep 3, '10 by
    and gauze or q-tips.....Tampa area regional medical center: sterile water, gauze, q-tips, and pink tipped oral care swabs
  12. Sep 4, '10 by
    Yuck to normal saline!! I wouldn't like the salt water in my mouth either.... I miss VAP guard We get an order for Biotene. This comes up from pharmacy, 1 per patient, its on oral gel that we swab the mouth with on a cotton tipped applicator. It's an iterim solution until we find something comperable to VAP guard. Some people in our unit will use breast milk as well applied in the same fashion.