prayedone

Our policy is to hold pressure(10-20 minutes)and express manually. We also notify our physicians if it very large. If it rebleeds or continues to form a hematoma, our physician will order a doppler study to ensure there is not a pseudo-anyersm present. We rarely use a femstop and never use sandbags or c-clamps. With the use of closure devices, angioseal and perclose, our hematoma rate has dropped but was not high to begin with.

As already stated, manual removal of sheaths, in our cath lab, requires 6 hours of bedrest. We also use Angioseal, a collagen plug, that requires 1-3 hours of bedrest. Also available to our doctors to use is Perclose which is a suture device that requires only 1 hour bedrest. Our patients and doctors prefer angioseal. The majority of our patients bedrest is 1-2 hours with discharge 1 hour after ambulation.

I've worked in three different labs. Each was unique in meds given routinely. One lab did conscious sedation on everyone using Fentanyl and Versed. We had atropine and lidocaine on top of our med/code cart for each case so it was in reach and not in a drawer. The second lab no special drug was used or at fingertip reach. The lab I am presently working in keeps a vial of 0.5cc of Aramine in a 10cc vial of sterile saline available for emergency use for decreased B/P. All of the labs used standard ACLS protocol drugs for emergency and code situtation.