Hi Stuart,
I currently flip my arterial needle so that it’s bevel down. That being said, is there any reason why I can’t just go in bevel down and leave it that way rather than going in bevel up and then flipping it? Sometimes it’s hard to get the wings up and over the lumps in my fistula.
Appreciate your help!
Gretchen
If you are talking about buttonhole needs yes, they are round on the end and will not cause vessel wall damage. However if it is a sharp no, they will cut the vessel wall and cause damage. You should look into the problem of why you have to flip. 1 not enough blood flow, ie stenos’ vessel wall is too weak to support the blood pump speed that you are using, the way to find out if this is happening is to slowly increase the speed if sucks down then you should created a new buttonhole. One other thing to look at is how deep the tunnel hole track is =the distance from the surface to the flashback, if it is less than ¼ inch use the 3/5 inch buttonhole needle that will help relieve the sucking down problem, please reply what you do so that others may learn from you experience