Retrograde IV meds.

[roseycrest]

Hi,

Do you give IV antibiotics via the retrograde method? I am asking for a friend, who works at a small children,s hospital.

I have worked for 40 years in nursing and know of no place that does, except perhaps NICU.

Thanks

[nightingale, RN]

Sorry but I am not familiar with it; what is it?

B.

[Mattigan, RN]

I only give retrograde push meds if I am going to be at bedside the entire time and in acute care usually not since I don't know what can happen to the syringe after I leave the room. (NICU and PICU it works well). If I am not able to stay at bedside I put it in a buretrol. All narcotics etc. I stay at bedside but retrograde is to much trouble usually si i just do the standard slow push and usually med is titrsated so I don't have to worry about giving o.1-2cc over 5- 10 minutes. That's hard to do.

[nurs4kids]

what is retrograde?????

[nightingale, RN]

I had asked that too... What is retrograde IV meds?

[roseycrest]

Whoops, sorry for the delay in response. My hospital does not use this method, but a friend who works in a childrens hospital does and she wanted to know if there were other hospitals using this method.

Basically,its a displacement method. Its only used for young/newborn infants for whom the volume of med usually mixed in a syrnge could be a problem.

The infant has a running IV of 10cc /hr. The IV is clamped and an empty syrnge is placed at the second port above the clamped

spot. Then the IV med is injected into the first port above the clamp. the task of pushing the med into the IV line displaces 3 cc of IV fluid into the syrnge. After that, the line is unclamped and the infusion resumes with the administration of the med. The fluid in the srynge is just discarded.

One of the Whalley and Wong editions covers this. From the lack of response but the number of people viewing my question,

I think this method is not being used much. One advantage of this method is that the hospital doesnt have to buy a lot of IV med pumps or you the nurse doesnt have to run around trying to find an unused pump during the busy times.

At my place, we use the medinfusion pumps that work well with even tiny volumes.

Thanks-hope is this helpful

[Jolie, BSN]

There was a discussion of retrograde meds on the NICU site a while back. You might want to look it up if you need more information.

[nightingale, RN]

Thank you for the post!

[LSRN]

On my Peds floor, we retrograde all IV meds on babies. Its hospital policy.