nursing care for chest tube of cabg patient

[Altin]

CAN YOU TELL ME who are the best way nursing care for chest tube of cabg patient to prevent clottings inside of drenaige chest.

thanks

[britpanda]

"Milking" refers to repeatedly squeezing the tube to break up clots or other obstructions, or squeezing the tube and pulling down the length of the tube with the tubing is crimped or clamped on the patient side of the tube from where you are stripping to avoid causing severe suction at the patient end of the tube.

"Stripping" involves squeezing the tube near the patient end of the tube and pulling down the tube away from the patient in order to suck clots through the tube. This creates extremely high levels of suction at the end of the tube inside the patient which can easily cause erosions.

Thank you so much for the explanations. I can understand why many people have said stripping could be extremely dangerous!!

[nmsumurse]

If you are in an extremely bad situation where your mediastinals are clotted off you can also remove the chest tube from the atrium and advance a suction catheter into them if the surgeon is far away/driving in and you don't want the pt to tamponade. set up sterile field and have either 14 or 12 f suction catheter to 20 mm/hg suction. Either assist the physician if available with this or depending on the institution do it yourself. 20 mm/hg of direction suction will not damage grafts as opposed to the hundred or so you will create by actually stripping a tube.