Alarms on venous pressure.....

[lillinny]

Well, just when I felt things were going well............ we had an alarm 11 and then 20.  I had forgotten to flip the venous needle    and then flipped the needle after the first alarm which should have improved things but nothing worked.  Could not get it to clear and each time the values dropped and by the time I got them back up (the flow and rate), it was alarming again.  had to abandon treatment.  Has anyone had this happen and were they able to resolve it?? 

Help.  Very discouraging after several weeks of things going smoothly. 






TOPIC MOVED to appropriate section - Bajanne,Moderator

[boswife]

hi, i'll be following this thread to see what comes of it.  I did want to ask you though, what 'do' you do at this point.    Abandon for the 'day' like ya did  and start again tomorrow?  Go to a center?  And im sure i'll learn what it is to "flip the venous needle" but  as for now...what is that?  Any info is appreciated :-)

[boswife]

PS.... is this in the right spot for this posting ?? only asking cause seems like it wont get noticed here and i'd love to read as much input as possible 

[mogee]

I've probably experienced every type of bad needle there is.  Do you experience spasms in your fistula?  Did you try to flush the needle with saline?  With steel needles it is possible to reposition them without disconnecting from the circuit.

I dialyse about 200 times a year.  I abandon treatments less than one percent of the time.  Even though my fistula is possessed by demons.

[silverhead]

Yes, this does belong in the NxStage section to get better attention......

Several things come to mind, did this happen at initial start-up?,  before you ramped up the flow rate?
I ask because we went through a long period of 11 & 20 alarms at start-up, cured the problem by changing the initial flow rate to 235 instead of 200, our reasoning, and NxStage techs agreed, was that in the beginning the machine ignores "air" alarms for something like the first 20 or 30 seconds (what it says are air alarms are really that it is seeing saline, or thinned blood in the lines) by increasing the flow rate the sensors are seeing regular blood by the time the time-out occurs.
You say you are flipping the venous needle, but the alarm bible says you should be checking the arterial position when you have a 20 alarm......
Another thing to try is look at your cartridge supplies and see if you have another lot number you can use and see if things change, I have had some lots that I believe had problems after several incidents that went away when I changed to a different one, was able to get the techs to send me new ones and threw away the bad ones......

[lillinny]

Thank you all.  yep, put this in the wrong section. . . will follow up with this in the correct one!  Thanks for the info.

[boswife]

Wow Silverhead.... way late but this is now something relivant to me so wanted to thank you for your explanation.....which, is SO weard to me because .................. we have a very dependable 20 at every start up, though ours comes as it's just about entering his V.  I thought just today (and this is why its so WEARD or ironic to me) i thought i might ought to up the speed a bit just to keep the flow smooth and not hang around waiting for it to catch up to speed with the lighter saliene.  Well, not just the same as what your saying, but sort of the same concept of 'upping' .  Funny to see this post right when i needed it.  I think of you often and hope your coping and getting on with some good life.  Hope all is well...