casper82

Just returned from a conference where Douglas Lewis of US Drug Testing lab said umbilical testing will be here soon. They have already started doing some testing back east. The 5 drug panels were available Oct 2007, the 7,9,12 became available 2nd and 3rd quarter 2008, and EtOH will be available late 2008. Should be coming along soon. We still do mec and urine.

That is why I want to know what others are doing. We are a smaller unit and our nursery CQI is looking into this issue, We transport a lot of infants to Denver and they still use Heparin to flush but I have seen some research that it really does not make that much difference.

I was just wondering how other hospitals flush their newborn INT's. We use .5 ml normal saline and .5 ml heparin(10 units/per ml) every 4 hours. I have heard that some places are just flushing with saline and some are every 6-8 hours. Thanks.