Abstract
Introduction: British Thoracic Society Guidelines recommends bedside ultrasound guidance for pleural procedures as it improves success rate and reduces complication rates. These services should be led by a dedicated respiratory team with competency in pleural ultrasound. A respiratory led inpatient pleural service would improve efficiency and reduce length of stay. Current guidance suggest inpatients that need pleural intervention must be done within 24 hours.
Background: The current inpatient pleural service involves radiology led ultrasound scan followed by the pleural procedure by the Respiratory team. We have observed significant delays in the whole process. We did a pilot study with a fully respiratory led service using the ultrasound machine from the Emergency department and compared to the current service.
Method: We randomly allocated 30 patients needing inpatient pleural procedures equally into two arms. We analyzed the various time durations between pleural effusions being noted and procedure completed. Results as below
Conclusion: As expected, our results showed that there was a significant reduction in all the subsets of time duration in the whole process when led by respiratory team.
We also met the 24-hour target.
We recommend that the respiratory team have their own portable ultrasound machine to facilitate the respiratory led inpatient pleural services. This will improve overall efficiency, reduce length of stay and give a better patient experience too.
Footnotes
Cite this article as: European Respiratory Journal 2021; 58: Suppl. 65, PA3541.
This abstract was presented at the 2021 ERS International Congress, in session “Prediction of exacerbations in patients with COPD”.
This is an ERS International Congress abstract. No full-text version is available. Further material to accompany this abstract may be available at www.ers-education.org (ERS member access only).
- Copyright ©the authors 2021
