Pulmonary Artery Catheter and Patients Mobility?

Specialties CCU

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Specializes in ER and ICU.

Dear colleagues,

I´m wondering - do you mobile your patients when they still have PAC (for example: from bed to chair)?

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No!!!!!!!

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Dear colleagues,

I´m wondering - do you mobile your patients when they still have PAC (for example: from bed to chair)?

We get them up from a bed to the chair, but that is it. It's not all that often that our patients will get out of bed if they have a PA cath, because if they are well enough to get up and out of bed, they don't need the PA. But yes, in a few cases, we do get them out of bed to a chair.

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We get them out of bed with Swanz all the time. No problems.

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Specializes in CCU/CVU/ICU.

Generally, where i work, pt's requiring swans are kept on bedrest as they're usually very sick/unstable...

HOWEVER, a big exception are our open-hearts. If stable, we try to sit these people up and transfer to chair early and often. (~6hrs post extubation if possible) even with a swan in place.

Ambulation is out of the question however.

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[QUOTE]We get them out of bed with Swanz all the time. No problems - Lukestar

We do too. We always have at least 2 nurses there - 1 to handle the patient and 1 just to handle the lines.

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Generally, where i work, pt's requiring swans are kept on bedrest as they're usually very sick/unstable...

HOWEVER, a big exception are our open-hearts. If stable, we try to sit these people up and transfer to chair early and often. (~6hrs post extubation if possible) even with a swan in place.

Ambulation is out of the question however.

We start to mobilize our CABGs (usually four to six hours post-extubation) but they have to meet parameters so we can pull the swan first.

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Where I work @ now, we don't get pts w/ swans out of bed. At another facility I worked at the intensivist INSISTED we get patients out of bed (unless they were close to death) so...there ya have it! :banghead:

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Specializes in Critical Care Baby!!!!!.

Early ambulation of CABG patients has been proven to decrease their length of stay and speed up the healing process. So, in response to your question, YES, we get these patients up from bed to chair with a SG usually within a few hours of returning from surgery. I have also gotten patients with a SG up to a cardiac chair. Doing this requires re-zeroing and re-leveling of the transducer and lines, but I have never had any problems doing this.

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It is not uncommon on our 16 bed CCU to allow our swan patients to get out of bed and walk around the unit with the assist of a RN....We obviously do not let them off of the unit, however some of our swan patients our PHTN patients on flolan and are a little less sick, so they do not need to be stuck in bed, also some of our pre-transplant patients need to mobilize and we will occasionally let them out of there rooms for a short walk...but as a rule most patients will only move from bed to chair....

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Specializes in Vascular/trauma/OB/peds anesthesia.
Dear colleagues,

I´m wondering - do you mobile your patients when they still have PAC (for example: from bed to chair)?

At our facility we do not ambulate pts until the Swan is removed. I am not sure what they do on the post op CABG unit, but as far as MI/SICU goes...they stay in beds. Ambulation with the Cordis/introducer is done all the time, just not with the actual Swan in place.

Todd

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Specializes in ICUs, Tele, etc..

ambulate, ambulate, ambulate, alot of wires i know but u can get away with just bringing one pressure bag for the distal port of the swan, clamp the cvp and the cvp and the proximal port and get the patient up in the chair, they would feel better and look better and make u feel better. though always make sure the baloon is down ;)

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