Abstract
Reports have shown that the use of ultrasound during peripheral venous catheter (PIVC) placement improves puncture success rates. To keep the puncture field clean, disinfectant solution is used as a substitute for ultrasound gel; however, this requires skillful manipulation of the ultrasonic probe. To address this problem, a PIVC fixation film dressing for ultrasound-guided puncture has been developed. Given that ultrasound generally attenuates while passing through film dressing, we evaluated whether the ultrasound images obtained through the film dressing had sufficient quality for PIVC installation. Ultrasound images of the basilic vein in a healthy adult were captured with and without the developed dressing. The evaluator blinded to the imaging conditions (with or without dressing) evaluated the images using a 10-point Likert scale for three items: resolution (RES), detail (DET), and total image quality (TIQ). For short-axis images, important for peripheral venipuncture, DET and TIQ were equivalent for both conditions, whereas RES was 9 and 7 points for images obtained without and with the dressing, respectively. Moreover, long-axis images obtained with the dressing produced a TIQ similar to images obtained without the dressing. Results showed that the dressing provided acceptable image quality for ultrasound-guided puncture while maintaining a clean field.
