How Many Kinds Of Needles Are Used In Blood Sample Collection?

Given the extent to which the satisfaction of patients has become a highly essential metric in the success of medical professionals, healthcare providers should especially emphasize on their front-line interactions with patients like phlebotomy. Though this procedure is needed for many laboratory operations, it continues to be a common area of anxiety, pain, and dislike for several patients. Amongst the initiatives to resolve these problems, the utilization of smaller needles and reduced insertion force might help cut down the existence of aching blood collection.

A common question that comes to the mind of a phlebotomist is whether to buy a butterfly needle or straight needle from a disposable blood needle producers and use either of them to add to effectiveness and cut down pain during blood collection. Collecting blood for laboratory testing is a significant task that many different medical professionals might perform during a given day. As such, phlebotomy and venipuncture experts must educate every worker who provides phlebotomy and venipuncture facilities on the appropriate patient-friendly blood sample collection techniques that give minimum discomfort to patients. 

Phlebotomy Tools

Whereas the venipuncture practice involves the identification of an ideal vein and successful collection of blood samples. This practice also involves attaining intravenous contact for venous blood sampling or IV medicine therapy. Healthcare experts should follow standard rules for specimen collection to guarantee accurate diagnostic outcomes as an error throughout the collection procedure influences all downstream analytics. One of the decisions a phlebotomy expert should make is to determine whether to utilize a butterfly( winged infusion) or a straight needle blood collection needle. Though straight needles are usually considered superior and safer for phlebotomy, there are special conditions where this is not the situation that makes this blood collection needle decision complex. During phlebotomy, people can perform blood collection utilizing a range of needle sizes and types and collection instruments. Butterfly needles often feature flexible tubing, while straight needles link to a syringe and vacuum container. Whenever collecting blood samples, it is necessary to select the finest possible resources for the facility, process, and patient.

The Straight Needle

The straight needle is fixed to a syringe or a tube holder before blood collection. Suppose the user chooses the blood collection tube holder. In that case, the phlebotomist does the insertion of the needle into the vein and then puts an evacuated tube onto the straight needle’s backside to extract the blood specimen. The cannula’s back side is flexible rubber over its posterior end that seals the blood needle when it is not used. After the operator links the tube, it damages the seal, and the vacuum inside the evacuated tube automatically extracts the blood’s specified volume. 

A stretchy rubber fitting ensures that the blood does not drain out of the cannula by eradicating every tube. The structure of the straight needle and blood collection system is best when numerous samples are needed, as several tubes could be attached to and eradicated from one needle. Straight needles are usually available in twenty-one and twenty-two gauge. The generally accepted advantages of straight needles are needle stick reductions, cost savings, and venous samples. Nevertheless, a few extenuating reasons make phlebotomists use the butterfly needle, encompassing when working with fragile or/and small veins. 

The Butterfly Needle

A winged-infusion blood collection technology or a butterfly needle links with slender tubing for quickly accessing tough veins. The needle is straight and short with plastic wings for the phlebotomy expert to hold while insertion. The tubing connects to a connector, a collection bottle, a vacuum tube holder, a syringe or other blood collection tubing. The popular butterfly needles are one-half and three-fourths long and offered in a series of gauges, with twenty-three and twenty-one guage the most often utilized. The tinniest guage, twenty-five is primarily used with pediatric patients.

The length of a short needle permits the phlebotomy professional to carry out its insertion at a shallow angle that could add to the easiness of use. Typically, there is a safety gadget that slides over a needle to latch it after it has been utilized to carry out the minimization of the needle stick.

The structure of a butterfly needle is great for those with weak or small veins(eg, feet and hand), encompassing burn, oncology, geriatric, pediatric or neonatal patients. For these situations, the utilization of the extremely finely bored twenty-five gauge needle is the chosen method. Obviously, it is great to circumvent straight needles with patients experiencing uncontrolled movements like seizing or tremors because of the high risk of nerve damage

Benefits Of Using A Straight Needle

Phlebotomy experts generally suggest that phlebotomists must use straight needles to collect blood as their susceptibility to clotting is lesser than the flexible tubing utilized by butterfly needles and less susceptibility to hemolysis than blood collection done through IV catheters. A 2003 research to assess risk factors for thickening in blood samples discovered that straight needles are superior to IV catheters because of a lowered risk of hemolysis. A 2008 research found that straight needles that withdraw were the safest and resulted in a sixty two percent decrease in the likelihood of needlestick wounds. 

Though secondary to user safety and patient, cost must not be ignored whenever considering the volume of usage involved in the supply of phlebotomy materials. Therefore, straight needles are comparatively cheaper, costing not even twenty cents per blood specimen draw. Thus, laboratories and hospitals must examine the utilization of butterfly needles cautiously, as judicial assessment of available veins of patients, available types and sizes of needles, and the choice of blood collection kit is critical.

Conclusion

Selecting the correct vein, needle size, device type, and collection tube for all patients is essential for all patients is essential for proper phlebotomy, the quality of which affects all other following procedures. Evidence suggests that straight needles provide greater security against needle sticks because of poor method, usually have less clotting and hemolysis and could offer essential cost savings. That stated, butterfly needles must be available and utilized for particular advantageous purposes. Medical professionals must focus on quality in phlebotomy to provide great laboratory facilities.