A new spring-driven implantable drug infusion pump

PCA is a patient-controlled analgesia infusion pump, which is used to infuse the medicine into the patients after surgery. It contains a syringe with pain medicine to infuse that is prescribed by the physician. The drugs used for pain control are high-alert medicines, since overmedication may cause death to the patients. These types of unbearable events may happen due to medical errors, prescription errors, adverse events (AEs), etc. Hence, it requires a precautionary attention or continuous monitoring for PCA pump infusion patients. However, always physicians or nurses may not monitor a patient continuously. To provide safety to the patient, the PCA pump needs a smart care process to alert the physician. This study represents the survey on PCA pump errors, AEs, and solutions for it to avoid them. The solution will automatically alert the infusion-related situation of the patients, those are taking the intravenous drug infusion at different procedure rooms in the hospitals. Moreover, it increases the safety to infusion pump with advances of decision-making in health, patient monitoring, alert notification to nursing, and productivity. This quality care can be achieved by integrating the PCA pump with other intelligent systems.

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Dexmedetomidine Decreases Cerebral Blood Flow Velocity in Humans

Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism ◽

10.1038/jcbfm.1993.45 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 13 (2) ◽

pp. 350-353 ◽

Cited By ~ 53

Author(s):

Mark H. Zornow ◽

Mervyn Maze ◽

J. Barry Dyck ◽

Steven L. Shafer

Keyword(s):

Blood Flow ◽

Arterial Pressure ◽

Flow Velocity ◽

Transcranial Doppler ◽

Blood Flow Velocity ◽

Cerebral Blood Flow Velocity ◽

Infusion Pump ◽

Plasma Concentrations ◽

Transcranial Doppler Sonography ◽

Drug Infusion

This study was designed to determine the effects of dexmedetomidine on CBF velocity as measured by transcranial Doppler sonography in human volunteers. Dexmedetomidine, a potent α-2 adrenergic agonist, was administered by computer-driven infusion pump to six male volunteers. Serial measurements of middle cerebral artery blood flow velocity at four steady-state plasma concentrations of dexmedetomidine were made with a 2-MHz transcranial Doppler transducer via the temporal window. The targeted plasma concentrations were 0.49, 0.65, 0.81, and 0.97 ng/ml. These represent 60, 80, 100, and 120%, respectively, of the mean peak concentration following the intramuscular administration of 2 μg/kg of dexmedetomidine. Subjects experienced a significant degree of sedation at the highest infusion rates. Mean CBF velocity decreased with each increase in plasma concentration of dexmedetomidine and then began to return to basal levels after termination of the infusion. A trend toward an increase in the pulsatility index at the higher levels of dexmedetomidine suggests that the observed decrement in CBF velocity was due to an increase in cerebral vascular resistance. Upon initiation of the drug infusion, mean arterial pressure decreased from ∼95 mm Hg to 78 mm Hg. There were no further decreases in arterial pressure with subsequent increases in plasma concentrations of dexmedetomidine. Arterial carbon dioxide tension increased to a maximum of 45 mm Hg during the drug infusion, but this increase from baseline was not statistically significant. These studies are in agreement with previous animal studies which demonstrate a decrease in CBF after administration of dexmedetomidine.

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An Error Associated with an Epidural Drug Infusion Pump

Anesthesiology ◽

10.1097/00000542-200607000-00041 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 105 (1) ◽

pp. 226-226

Author(s):

Koushik Ghosh ◽

Robert Ciolino

Keyword(s):

Infusion Pump ◽

Drug Infusion

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Development and in vitro evaluation of a flow-adjustable elastic drug infusion pump

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Part H Journal of Engineering in Medicine ◽

10.1177/0954411911419008 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 225 (11) ◽

pp. 1070-1077 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

S-W Choi ◽

S-M Kang ◽

H-Y Kim ◽

K-W Nam

Keyword(s):

Flow Pattern ◽

Infusion Pump ◽

Injection Rate ◽

Chamber Pressure ◽

Elastic Membrane ◽

Physiological Status ◽

Drug Infusion ◽

Short Term ◽

Infusion Pumps

Passive-type drug infusion pumps have several advantages over active-type pumps including a simple drug chamber structure and relatively high operational stability. However, conventional passive-type infusion pumps also have several limitations compared to active ejection pumps, such as a fixed flowrate and monotonic flow pattern. To enhance the clinical feasibility of using passive-type drug infusion pumps, flow readjustment and flow regulation abilities are needed. This paper proposes a new portable elastic drug infusion pump that integrates the advantages of active and passive infusion pumps to improve clinical feasibility. The proposed infusion pump incorporates a passively driven drug chamber and an actively adjusted flow controller, which can adjust and regulate various target flowrates and adjust the flow pattern in accordance with the patient’s time-varying physiological status. The proposed infusion pump uses the contraction force of an expanded elastic membrane to extract the drug from the drug chamber for delivery into the patient’s body through an outlet catheter. It also utilizes a flow sensor, a flow resistor, and a motor-driven flow restrictor that can monitor the real-time flowrate through the outlet catheter and automatically regulate the actual flowrate around the target value. Experiments on the proposed system resulted in actual injection rates of 0.49 ± 0.03 (mean ± standard deviation), 0.98 ± 0.03, 1.49 ± 0.04, and 1.99 ± 0.03 ml/h when the target injection rate was set to 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 ml/h, respectively. During the entire period of operation from the fully filled state to the totally empty state, an inner-chamber pressure of >100 mmHg was maintained, which shows that the proposed infusion pump can stably maintain its target flowrate as the amount of drug remaining to be injected decreases. It appears that the proposed drug infusion pump can be applied to a wide variety of patient treatments that require short-term, accurate, and stable drug delivery.

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