Low Venous pressure and ..........what to do about it?

[lillinny]

Things had been going very well for several weeks.  Guess I knew it couldn't last!  So, last friday I forgot to flip the arterial needle.  The way his arterial access is, you have to flip the needle or you get an error.  So. . . I got an alarm "11" and then "20" and no matter what I did - including flipping the damn needle, they wouldn't clear.  On top of that, each time I got the alarm all the values would default to '000's and as I would try to reset them, the alarms would go off again.  We ended up terminating treatment.   

So, my question.........has this happened to anyone else?  And, if so, were you able to fix the alarm?  I'm at a loss as to how to resolve it should it happen again - altho I am checking the damn needed several times to make sure I flipped it before moving on!  Any ideas would be welcome.

[boswife]

hum, i thought this post of yours  got moved here (isnt this the post that was in the weard place?) and got answered.  I just read it again and really wanted to see some answers too.  Am i missing them somewhre? even though i dont knot the meanings of the #'s yet, i do know about flipping needles and  i'd love to know what to do in this situation.  Hubby did have to have his needle flipped incenter yesterday and it took a couple of times befor the alarm quit, but it did.  THESE are the things that are going to frustrate me at first, but im guessing become hohum in time.  like i think Tom (silverhead) said, you know you've been doing home diaysis for a long time when you hear the alarm go off and you say..i'll be there in a min...instead of breaking a sweat to get there in seconds flat..lol  (or something close to that)

[greg10]

This thread is probably more about cannulation than the NxStage low venous pressure alarm code 20.  Sometimes if the cannulation is not working, there is no way of bypassing code 20 and as you said, you had to stop treatment and hope that the next cannulation has a different result.

Cannulation is more of an art than it is science because there are so many variables involved and human factors that can altered the outcome.
Perhaps this thread may help: http://ihatedialysis.com/forum/index.php?topic=19631.msg0;topicseen#new