[A comparative study of 5 infusion pumps: an evaluation of their suitability for administering parenteral nutrition]

To facilitate the control of administering parenteral nutrition (PN), the tendency is to replace traditional infusion equipment with infusion pumps. The aim of this study is to determine the characteristics that a pump should have for infusing PN mixtures and, based on these, to evaluate five models available on the market. The pumps evaluated, all with volumetric programming were: Becton Dickinson VIP II (Prim); Life-Care Pump Model 4 (Abbot-Shaw); Infusomat Secura 1.000 (Braun); Flo-gard (tm) 6,200 (Baxter) and IVAC-591 (Ivac). The following method was used: a) Definition of 16 basic requisites and 7 secondary requisites considered necessary in a PN pump, in accordance with the following criteria: safety, practical usage, comfort and hospital circuits. b) Review and checking of the technical reports on each pump. c) Laboratory tests simulating PN infusion, evaluating the regularity and precision of the infusion speed, and d) Subjective evaluation survey. All the pumps under study complied with the basic requisites. There were differences in the subjective evaluation, although with regard to all concepts and models a score of over 2.5 was reached in a scale of 0 to 5. The highest and lowest values with regard to regularity and precision were within the following ranges: +/- 0.6 ml/h(-)+/- 0.0 ml/h and + 3.4%(-)-1.6% respectively, and no instance of values outside the established ones was detected. The pumps only partly complied with the secondary requisites. Finally, the criteria for defining the most significant requisites was reviewed, based on the services offered by the existing pumps, as well as techniques for determining regularity and precision.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)