Anesthesia and analgesia
-
Anesthesia and analgesia · Oct 2017
Multicenter Study Observational StudyAlarm Limits for Intraoperative Drug Infusions: A Report From the Multicenter Perioperative Outcomes Group.
Continuous medication infusions are commonly used during surgical procedures. Alarm settings for infusion pumps are considered important for patient safety, but limits are not created in a standardized manner from actual usage data. We estimated 90th and 95th percentile infusion rates from a national database for potential use as upper limit alarm settings. ⋯ Alarm settings based on infusion rate percentile limits would be triggered at predictable rates; ie, the 95th percentile would be exceeded and an alarm sounded during 1 in 20 infusion rate entries. As a result, institutions could establish pump alarm settings consistent with desired alarm frequency using their own or externally validated usage data. Further study will be needed to determine the optimal percentile for infusion alarm settings.