Disposable ECG Leads Help Improve Patient Safety and Reduce Costs
ECG cables and lead wires are reported to be an important part of monitoring patients in healthcare settings, but inadequate cleaning is a significant cause of surgical site infections.
Cleaning supplies can also damage the quality of ECG leads, leading to misjudgments in hospitals, thereby increasing the workload of clinical staff.
In a symposium, Dr. Peter Mallow, director of clinical outcomes and economics at Xavier University in Cincinnati, and Marilyn Welling, interim manager of San Francisco Bay Area Hospitals, discussed how the use of ECG lead wires on a single patient can help reduce alert-induced workload and reduce alarms. Reduce the risk of surgical site infections, which can help save costs for healthcare facilities.
The burden of reusable ECG leads
According to Dr. Mallow, clinical staff must keep an eye out for alerts on multiple patient monitoring systems that can become overwhelmed. Excessive alerting can desensitize clinical staff to alert sounds, who may find it difficult to distinguish between emergency alerts and false alarms, and can lead to interruptions in care and patient safety concerns. Excessive alerting ranks #6 on the ECRI Institute's 2020 Top 10 Health Technology Hazards Report for Hospitals, Medical Practices, and Home Care Providers.
Re-use of ECG leads is a major cause of false positives in healthcare facilities, and addressing this issue can provide significant advantages for patients and staff.
"Most ECG leads are reused more than 50 times, which causes wear and tear, which reduces their quality over time," Dr. Mallow said. Common problems include broken wires, damaged connector pins, or frayed wires.
Reusable ECG leads are difficult to get rid of bacteria thoroughly, and cleaning supplies can also affect their quality over time, resulting in poor connections and more false positives. These cleanings take up precious time nurses take care of patients.
Hospital feeling risk
In addition to over-alarming, there is also the risk of hospital infection.
"ECG lead wires are reusable items that come into direct contact with the patient's skin," Dr. Marlow said. "They are vectors for cross-contamination and surgical site infections because despite proper cleaning, they are still dirty and have a 75%+ chance of being contaminated with drug-resistant organisms."
Surgical site infections are one of the most common HAIs, costing patients an average of $21,000 per infection.
"It's a huge burden on a single agency," Dr. Marlowe said.
The benefits of using disposable ECG leads
Disposable ECG cables and lead wires from Yumai Medical are designed to be easy to use and reduce the risk of hospital sickness.
The use of disposable leadwires eliminates the cleaning steps required for reusable products, saving clinical staff valuable time caring for patients. It also reduces the risk of clinical nosocomial feeling and saves the cost of medical institutions.
Features and Advantages of Umai Disposable ECG Leads
• The ECG lead wire has a complete range of models, which can be adapted to the cables of many well-known manufacturers in the world, and have a wide range of compatibility with equipment.
• The white detachable side-by-side cable set avoids the entanglement of leads, clean and beautiful, comfortable and easy to use.
• Using medical PVC plastic and low-impedance wires, it has the advantages of good texture, bending resistance, corrosion resistance, and stable waveform.
• The connection hardware at the equipment end and the electrode surface are gold-plated and nickel-plated, with excellent electrical conductivity, ensuring full and reliable contact at the connection;
• The injection-molded design of the splitter has the advantages of high electrical performance of insulation and voltage resistance, stronger ability to withstand tension and bending, and more reliable overall linear connection;
• Medical grade environmental protection material, passed strict biocompatibility test;
• Products obtained NMPA, FDA and CE certification.
Note (the above is translated from Beckers Hhospital Rreview)