Kangaroo Care

[Crafty Fraggle]

Does anyone here work at a facility that does kangaroo care on a high frequency ventilator? If so are you willing to share which high frequency ventilator it is and which brand it is?

At my unit there has been debate about this in the past and I'm just trying to get a feel for practices. We do KC with the Jet venitlator from Bunnell. There is debate about expanding this into our oscillator (Sensormatics brand) kids as well. Unfortunately we don't have much space and the tubing is so rigid that we wonder how to make this possible.

[umcRN, BSN, RN]

only seen it done in withdrawal of care situations.

(although there was a nurse in our unit once who had a 24 weeker and I've heard that she was allowed to kangaroo him on the HFOV, I didn't work there at the time so i'm not sure how it was done. He did eventually die)

[NicuGal, MSN, RN]

Being on HF or OSC excludes those kids from being kangarooed. They are usually too sick to move anyways. We don't take our kids off the osc unless we absolutely have to because you lose your volumes and get collapses rather quickly, which can be a big setback. And we have the same problem you do, little space and big tubing, not going to work.

We only have done it when it was inevitable that the baby was going to die.

[Imafloat, BSN, RN]

If the babies are on the little oscillator, we let them out to hold.

If they are on sensormedics, it's not going to happen. Those kids are usually so sick that they are a touch me not. Besides that, the tubing is so stiff that I can only imagine the kid becoming extubated.

[Bortaz, MSN, RN]

I cannot even imagine KCing a kid while on jet vent. Too sick, too much risk of extubation.

[NICU_babyRN, BSN, RN]

If the babies are on the little oscillator, we let them out to hold.

If they are on sensormedics, it's not going to happen. Those kids are usually so sick that they are a touch me not. Besides that, the tubing is so stiff that I can only imagine the kid becoming extubated.

Little Oscillator? What exactly do you mean?

[Crafty Fraggle]

Thank you for your answers. And Make.it.workRN - what brand is your "little oscillator?"

[Imafloat, BSN, RN]

Thank you for your answers. And Make.it.workRN - what brand is your "little oscillator?"

We use the Infant Star 950.

[hcox1975, BSN, RN]

We do not do kangaroo care with touch me nots. We use these things called dandle Roos. They are awesome because the swaddle the babies and the also will position the arms so they can't self extubate. I have found that oscillator babies have to be re-intubated because the tubing is so heavy, it puts a constant pull on the tube. I wish there was a way to prevent this.