Oral Only System

[darynash]

We are trying to convert to an enteral only feeding system. Oral syringes, enteral only OG tubes and extension sets. We want to prevent an oral feeding from accidently being infused into an IV because it was in a luer lock syringe and was piggybacked into an IV.

Has anyone else started doing this? What syringes do you use? What syringe pumps are you using?

Thanks.

[Gompers, BSN, RN]

We are trying to convert to an enteral only feeding system. Oral syringes, enteral only OG tubes and extension sets. We want to prevent an oral feeding from accidently being infused into an IV because it was in a luer lock syringe and was piggybacked into an IV.

Has anyone else started doing this? What syringes do you use? What syringe pumps are you using?

Thanks.

We have recently started to trial some of these tubes. I forget the brand - I think it starts with a "V" - and the tubes and extension sets all have an orange line one them to identify them as oral. They also only have oral ports and don't fit luer locks. We like them okay so far. Actually, the tubes themselves are nice - when you wet the tip, it activates a lubricant so they're easier to insert. The only problem we've had with them is when we're checking residuals and then giving back the excess, sometimes the pressure is too much and the syringe blows right off the end of the NG tube, spraying residual everywhere. :barf01:

When we use continuous feeds, we typically use the Cor-Pak or Kangaroo brand pumps - both tubings have tips that fit right into the oral-syringe compatible NG tubes, no luer lock connections. If we have a baby on small amounts of continuous feeds and need to use a syringe pump instead, we'll probably pull out the old, huge Harvard pumps - on those you manually set how large the syringe is and how fast you want the feed to go, so the company that makes the syringe isn't important (doesn't need to be programmed into the pump like with the newer pumps). I personally don't like "wasting" our regular syringe pumps (we have Baxter and Smartpumps) on feedings anyways, and maybe the fact that we can't use these new oral syringes in those pumps is a good thing - further ensuring the safety of our babies by ensuring that we don't mix up IV and oral feeds.

Whew!

[darynash]

We are pretty happy with our OG tubes and extension sets. Our headache right now is the oral syringes not working in our Baxter pumps for continuous feeds. That is a great idea to use the old pumps. I will try to find them. Thanks.

[dawngloves, BSN, RN]

We use the orange tubing that Gombers mentioned. You'd have to be pretty stupid to hook that up to an IV.Otherwise we still use regular pumps and syringes.

[EricJRN, MSN, RN]

We started using the orange tubing a few weeks ago. Shortly thereafter, we admitted a baby whose mom had lost her first child in '05 due to this very error (fortunately, not at our hospital). The feeding had been infused intravenously at a large, well-respected academic facility.