ivWatch to integrate IV infiltration sensor into Philips’ patient monitors

For decades, nurses have sent drugs surging through a patient’s body using the power of the circulatory system. Catheters deliver medications destined to travel through a person’s veins – but it doesn’t always turn out that way.

Sometimes, leaky veins cause drugs to seep into surrounding tissue or to back out of the insertion site, a problem referred to as an “IV infiltration.” In some cases, these problems involve caustic drugs, such as chemotherapeutics, resulting in an extravasation.

“It’s a drug-delivery issue that we have to be really concerned about,” Gary Warren told Drug Delivery Business News.

Warren is the chief executive of ivWatch, a medical device maker that markets a sensor designed to continuously monitor fluid as it flows into a person’s vein. The company’s FDA-approved device is the size of a pencil eraser, according to Warren, and it uses light to measure the optical density of the tissue surrounding an IV insertion site.

Get the full story at our sister site, Drug Delivery Business News.

The post ivWatch to integrate IV infiltration sensor into Philips’ patient monitors appeared first on MassDevice.

from MassDevice https://ift.tt/2Ic5amD