Do you put tubbing and connections from central lines outside the incubator?

[sofiam]

Hi!

I know that some units put their tubbing and connections from central lines outside the incubator, because of the humidity and warm environment inside that may help bacterias coloninzing them...

How do you do in your unit?

Do you have any cientific evidence that support this, based on the reduction of infection associated to central lines?

Just one more thing: do you protect your connections with any steril paper or fabric?

Big thank you

[palesarah]

OK, I had a busy day at work and am brain dead, so forgive me if I missed something. If you connect the ports then spike the bag, how do you prime your tubing?

Thanks for asking because I couldn't figure it out, either, but figured I must just be tired and brain dead too and didn't want to ask!

[RainDreamer, BSN, RN]

We spike the bag while sterile and then run the lines steriley. I don't really know how else to explain it, it makes sense when we do it though!

Also, we only change the entire tubing system every 96 hours.

[BittyBabyGrower, MSN, RN]

We use central line bundles from ihi.org . We change all tubings q72 except for lipids, which is 24 and some drips that are 48. All of our lines have stopcocks on them that we put our meds thru. We change all lines sterile also, once we spike the bag and run the fluids thru we use sterile gloves to change the line and lay the tubing on a sterile field. we also scrub all connections with chloraprep before we take them apart. We have no syringes hanging off any lines, including artlines...everything has a rubber port that gets scrubbed.

This what our line would look like:

bag---tubing---filter----stopcock( usually two, one for lipids one for meds and more if we have mulitple drips)---stopcock---rubber port----central line.

We put our lipids on the second stopcock and meds on the first one nearest the line. All the stopcocks get changed with the tubing changes.

[elizabells, BSN, RN]

OK, I had a busy day at work and am brain dead, so forgive me if I missed something. If you connect the ports then spike the bag, how do you prime your tubing?

All the ports but the one to the baby. We connect everything and spike the bag on a sterile field, then run it through and clamp. THEN we wrap the ends of the tubing in said sterile field, bring it all over to the baby, set up a new sterile field in the bed, clamp the PICC itself, disconnect the old lines, glove up, scrub that hub, then connect to the baby. I tend to put the lines in the pump and start the fluids running before I connect to the baby, because when the channel loads on our pumps sometimes it draws a little air back into the line. Hope that helps!

[sofiam]

We connect everything and spike the bag on a sterile field, then run it through and clamp. THEN we wrap the ends of the tubing in said sterile field, bring it all over to the baby, set up a new sterile field in the bed, clamp the PICC itself, disconnect the old lines, glove up, scrub that hub, then connect to the baby. I tend to put the lines in the pump and start the fluids running before I connect to the baby, because when the channel loads on our pumps sometimes it draws a little air back into the line. Hope that helps!

Hi! That´s exactly what we do here...And all our preparations and changes are sterile and made by 2 nurses in the afternoon shift every 24hours... All the connections are protected with a sterile field and when we need to do medication (on the central lines)we untape he sterile field, wear sterile gloves and desinfect the conecctions with 70º alcool.