An intuitive vessel viewing system to facilitate blood withdrawal

Venipunctures to draw blood for diagnostics can be cumbersome, especially for small children, due to the cutaneous fat, tiny veins and skin pigments. Multiple puncture attempts are painful and traumatic. A compact and practical system was developed based on IR translumination to visualized blood vessel underneath the skin to provide guidance during vessel puncture procedures. A clinical trial has been performed in 125 young children (age 0-6 yrs) to prove the effectiveness of the system in the blood withdrawal procedure looking at failure to puncture at first attempt and time on needle manipulation in the skin. There was a significant decrease from 13% to 2% in failure rate. The time needed to search for a vein also decreased significantly. The nurses were satisfied with the user friendliness and short learning curve of the vessel viewing system while its use did not interfere with the routine procedure. The system has potential to be use in a large are of applications were vessel punctures are performed also in adults. Although the concept of patient friendliness is already accepted, measurements need to show the effectiveness for particular groups of patients. The vessel viewing system proved to be effective to perform blood withdrawals resulting in less pain and trauma for the patients.