Benefits And Drawbacks Of Surgical Drain Management

By Aimee Schwartz


Medical operations must be done meticulously and skillfully. There are equipment, and tools that work for one procedure but may not be applicable to the other. That is why skills, knowledge, and care should come together when it comes to applying processes to a patient. Practitioners should always realize that the lives of their patients rely on their hands.

Either mere examinations or intensive surgeries need tools and systems to help make the process more accurate and to achieve better results. Surgical drain management is one of the functions of both professionals and systems working together. Surgical drains are used to take away all the excess air and fluids from the body of the patient.

Some of the examples include the prevention of fluid accumulation like pus, blood, fluids, and dead space or air and characterization of fluid especially if there is a detection of anastomotic leakage. This can be done in operations like plastic surgery, orthopedic procedures, chest drainage process, neurosurgery, cyst operations, catheters, and many others. The application and insertion of such drainages is done carefully by a clinical professional.

Drains are classified according to passive or active, rubber or silastic, closed or open. Passives are those that do not have suction tubes and depend on pressure, while active has suctions that maintain suction pressures at either high or low levels. Rubbers have tract while silastics are inert. Then there is the open system using stoma or drain pads and the closed drains liquids to a bottle.

The fluids that are accumulated by these tools are removed or stopped when they reach around twenty five milliliters a day. They can also be removed or withdrawn in a gradual manner which is about two centimeters per day. But those attached in postoperative sites are kept longer for protection. This will last approximately seven days.

Palliative care means being able to assist a patient with utmost care not only for the physical but also the emotional and psychological wellbeing of the patient. This is very applicable in all types of systems and procedures. That is why they need to be careful and consider the patient when removing the tubes out of the part where the operation took place.

They must also carefully look into the guidelines from time to time in case there are very sensitive processes. Monitoring is an important so that they will know when to remove the tubes. Removing it means that the suction bags or bottles have reached a measurement of twenty five milliliters. They need to observe if the wound has healed yet or not. Otherwise, removing can be the cause of getting infections.

Operations in the gastrointestinal systems do not imply the use of drains because it can pose a threat to the patient. This is a sensitive part and it is much safer without this equipment. If the mechanical pressure is not properly controlled, there could be complications.

Many lives depend on these medical operations. If there are errors in the process, it could cause deadly infections. Thus, medical practitioners have to be really true to their vows of saving lives. Palliative care should be performed.




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