Forgot to put water in a water seal chamber on a chest tube

[A95]

Hi everyone, I did a stupid thing today and forgot to put a water in a water seal chamber of a chest tube once I switched it from suction. How badly will it affect the patient? It was like 6 hours before I realized. I feel absolutely terrible

[Wuzzie]

If it was going to affect the patient it likely would have done so by now. .

[Guest 1152923]

  If it was a post surgical heart or lung patient, it could have resulted in a pneumo/hemothorax or mediastinum by not allowing a negative pressure in the thorax or the re-expansion of the lungs.  If this were the case, the patient would likely have already clinically deteriorated by now.  I'm guessing though that it was caught in due time and is probably not a huge deal as Wuzzie suggested.  Don't beat yourself up though, I can't tell you how many things I've done in nursing, learned, and will never do again.

[MunoRN, RN]

You should always remember to fill the water chamber, but in today's chest suction drains it won't actually affect the functioning of the drain if the water chamber is empty.

It used to be that drains commonly used "wet suction" that depended on a "wet seal", as far as I can tell all currently available drains are dry suction and use a dry seal.

It can be confusing since they still have a water chamber, and may even refer to this chamber as the "water seal" but the seal is actually separate from that and uses a one-way valve.  The only purpose of the water chamber in these drains is to be able to visualize and quantify an air leak.

[LovingLife123]

15 hours ago, MunoRN said:

You should always remember to fill the water chamber, but in today's chest suction drains it won't actually affect the functioning of the drain if the water chamber is empty.

It used to be that drains commonly used "wet suction" that depended on a "wet seal", as far as I can tell all currently available drains are dry suction and use a dry seal.

It can be confusing since they still have a water chamber, and may even refer to this chamber as the "water seal" but the seal is actually separate from that and uses a one-way valve.  The only purpose of the water chamber in these drains is to be able to visualize and quantify an air leak.

I had only worked with the atriums that had the dry seal, but recently have seen the wet seals as well.  I was slightly confused when I saw my first one about two weeks ago because it constantly bubbles and my first thought was the patient had a giant air leak.

I've seen 3 or 4 of them recently.