I may have screwed up.
There I said it straight out front.
Only I’m not quite ready to totally eat humble pie just yet, so I am sending a desperate shout-out for help.
A couple of days ago I posted this: Can you link these 2 things?
The picture on the right, as most people correctly identified, is an Xray of a right sided haemopneumothorax.
The picture on the left, which people were not so certain about, was of 3 ping-pong balls.
I sanctimoniously challenged nurses to make the connection ( but not to tell others if they had).
Some people had indicated that they knew exactly what the connection was. Many more have sent me emails asking, pleading and demanding me to let them know.
And here is the rub….I may have screwed up. There may not in fact be any connection whatsoever.
Or ……there may be some unintended connection that others have found.
The answer (or not):
Many years ago, underwater sealed drains (connected to chest tubes, you know…to drain haemopneumothoraxes) used to consist of 3 separate glass bottles connected by rubber tubing. Just like you always see in those diagrams when you are learning about underwater sealed drains.
We used these bottles when I started nursing. I remember emptying them in the pan room and washing them out.
I thought they had a ping-pong ball inside a wire cage just under hole in the lid, to act like a one-way valve and stop any fluid flowing from the collection bottle up into the suction tubing. I was sure of this.
I remember ping-pong balls!
I have since visited some hospitals in (so-called) underdeveloped countries and seen them still using the 3 bottle system on some of their wards.
I thought I saw ping-pong balls. Yup, they did.
Just call me boxhead:
Kelly actually woke me up early the next morning:
“Hey Ian, that post you just put up about the ping-pong balls…..you’ve got it wrong”.
“No”, I mumbled into my pillow, “they were in the underwater sealed drainage bottles. Pretty clever huh?”.
“No, boxhead….they were in the wall suction bottles. There were never ping-pong balls in the drainage bottles!”
I sat up: “Look Kelly, I am a senior nurse….I have been around the ward once or thrice. There were ping-pong balls.”
“No Ian, what you are, is an idiot. NO balls.”
Oh.
When Kelly says no balls, she means….no balls.
Call for help:
So before I have to cook up a large serving of humble pie, I am asking, nay pleading, for help.
I have 2 questions:
- Is there anyone else out there who remembers 3-bottle UWSD systems with ping-pong balls?
- For those who indicated that you got the connections. If not the ping-pong UWSD answer, what exactly was the connection that you saw ( it is me that is super curious now)?
I remember ping-pong balls! Does that make me a boxhead?…… er….yup, feel free to answer that.
Yup Ian I remember glass suction bottle systems with the ping pong ball valves in them, it was to prevent overflow and polution of the suction system, as I recall these were the same glass bottles we used to make up the UWSD system…………but its been 25 years since those halcyon days in the pan room manually scrubbing monometal bed pans, suction bottles and sputum mugs
I choose to forget some things!
Lol!!! I work @ Groote Schuur Hospital and we still have to do all those yucky chores.
The ping pong balls were in the wall suction, so that when the bottle was full the ball would stop/block at the outlet suction pipe in the lid of the bottle.
)
Underwater seals had the long and one short glass rod, [broke easily] the short one was the one going to the wall and so causing a negative pressure, the long one attached to the patients drain tubing, and that had to be under the water level… of course there was a nurse on in every ICU that didnt check and put it the wrong way, with some demise and lots of drama
the other place where balls are found are in the Incentive deep breathing exerciser, that has 3 shades of blue ball [mine anyway] and the patient sucks it /them up and gains either a 600/900/1200 ml level turn the object upside down and blow into them…
so yes they would have been part of the care plan… known in the olden days as treatment and nursing care. so in a way you were right, cos often the UWS bottle could be attached to a low wall suction unit, !!!
you may retain your balls afterall
I jumped straight to incentive spirometry too…
I wasn’t entirely certain. I have never seen the 3 bottle UWSD with ping-pong balls. But I have seen the three “Ping-Pong” balls in incentive spirometry. So presumed it was linked somehow. And that’s my theory and I’m sticking to it. To each his own!
Of course! Spirometry.
That’s what I meant all along.
I can’t believe people did not get that.
(thanks.)
same….incentive spirometry in the form of a ‘tri-flow meter’
Thanks Janette,
Oh brother,
I can see I’m going to end up looking like an uber-boxhead here.
Kelly is just going to love reading all these comments.