Please Help

Nurses General Nursing

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Specializes in Gerontological, cardiac, med-surg, peds.

Working on my musculoskeletal lecture (ADN). Cannot find this one bit of information ANYWHERE (and I have searched and searched, through textbooks, on the internet, even asked questions at my local hospital). Does anyone out there know what the NORMAL amount of bloody drainage in a hemovac should be (the first 24 hours) after total hip replacement surgery and what would be considered abnormal? Thank you so much in advance :cool:

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I have no source for this. I could be wrong but if memory serves me correctly, anything greater than 250 cc's 24 hours post-op is abnormal. It's been awhile since I did ortho. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I did find an old clinical path sheet for hip replacement, which indicates the hemovac be removed on hospital day #2 under normal circumstances.

Linda

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I have taken care of many people with drains in all parts of the body. Drains are placed to remove fluids that would cause pain and possible source of infection. These pocket of fluid would also take the body a long time to clean up. Theroy. Amount vary with each patient. Drs do not seem to be concerned with the amount that is drained. Document amount of drainage, color. Drainage is expected to decrease over time. Sometimes drains JP. esp. have to be emptied more that once a shift, sometimes they don't have any fluids in them. I often wonder if this has something to do with placement. Are the ends occluded? I have seen patients pull them out, Drs do not put them back. So I guess the body has to do the clean up work then. I believe this is a difficult subject to pin down.

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