Florida Times-Union:
New technology gets under your skin
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
By URVAKSH KARKARIA, The Times-Union
Excerpts from the article.
Shands Jacksonville is the first hospital in the Southeast to offer a quick and painless way to find veins and arteries - an often uncomfortable procedure required before undergoing blood and intravenous infusions.
The VeinViewer uses infrared light to detect veins and arteries up to about a quarter of an inch below the skin's surface. The infrared light hits the vessels and is reflected back into a camera. A computer then creates an image of the veins and arteries and projects the image onto the patient's skin.
The device, manufactured by Memphis, Tenn.-based Luminetx Corp. and commercially available since mid-June, was named one of Time magazine's "coolest inventions of 2004," Shands said in a statement.
Wolfson Children's Hospital, Baptist Medical Center Downtown and St. Vincent's Medical Center have evaluated the VeinViewer….
Conventional methods for finding veins can turn the patient into a pin cushion. Nurses rely on tactile and visual cues - and some guesswork - to find a suitable vein.
The VeinViewer "takes the guesswork out," said Miles Curro, an independent distributor of the VeinViewer. "It gives [nurses] a road map to work with."
The device would provide an "additional tool to the arsenal of tools that we have," said Holly Hess, a registered nurse who specializes in pediatric IVs at Wolfson Children's Hospital.
The noninvasive technology is especially suitable for sensitive patients like infants, including premature babies whose veins are often too small to access using conventional procedures.
"We see significant number of critically ill patients, and the most difficult part is getting the IV access for fluids and medications," said Madeline Joseph, division chief of Pediatric Emergency Medicine at Shands. "It's very frustrating for the ... patients when we have to do multiple attempts to get the IV access."
Shands hopes to use the VeinViewer on about 20 percent of the 27,000 pediatric patients annually, Joseph said.
The device… is beneficial for patients with darker complexions whose skin tends to be less translucent, and heavier patients whose veins and arteries are deeper and more difficult to access.
The VeinViewer is good for dehydrated patients, too, because their veins "might not be full, making them harder to see or feel through the skin," Curro said.
The device lends a helping hand to caregivers, too.
It is beneficial for beginning nurses and those who struggle with IV skills, Hess said.
"It sort of levels the playing field, a little bit," she said.
Back to News