Influence of transport conditions on infusion pumps performance and triggering alarms: A simulation-based research

Critical care transport is an essential component of care system. Inadequacies in equipment, during the interhospital transport can lead to adverse event.

To verify the influence of physical transport conditions in the infusion pumps (IPs) performance and alarm activation.

Simulation-based study about IPs use during interhospital ground transportation. There were 54 simulations (18 flowmetric, 18 volumetric, 18 syringe IPs). The equipment were tested at 01, 05 and 50mL/h infusion flow. Descriptive and inferential statistical analysis, with a 5% significance level was performed.

The effectively infused volume was lower than the expected volume for the 3 IPs types. Vibration was the variable with highest correlation in volume difference. Flowmetric IPs showed higher alarm frequency (50.0%), followed by syringe IPs (27.8%). Free flow predominated in flowmetric IP and airline and occlusion alarms in volumetric and syringe IP. Error percentage of delivered fluid ranged from 2.8% to 25.9% being more evident in flowmeter IPs.

The infusion pumps showed infusion misfunctioning when subjected to physical transport conditions. Syringe IPs were more accurate for low flow administration, while for the administration of solutions at higher flow rate, the volumetric IP showed the highest accuracy.