Transonic’s Debbie-Brouwer Maier is in the news.

Again.

This time, it’s CBS News.

We may have to rein her in. There’s been talk… Is it possible to help too much? What if she offends lazy people? We try not to offend.

But Debbie is an expert at showing-up. What was Stallone’s line in the Tulsa King? “I show you up by showing up!” Debbie shows up again and again to protect patients who are in danger, and VND (venous needle dislodgement) is her latest adversary.

VND is a small acronym for a problem that’s big enough to kill a dialysis patient in seconds. Basically, a dialysis machine siphons the patient’s blood, filters it because their kidneys can’t, then returns it via a venous needle. So if that venous needle dislodges, the patient can bleed out in one to three minutes.

CBS news interviewed Debbie because she is a dialysis nurse with 40 years of experience in the dialysis trenches. Also because she is a member of the American Nephrology Nurses Association VND Taskforce. Which may indicate she knows something about it.    

More and more patients are choosing to dialyze at home. So if VND occurs, they may have their caretaker, or only themselves, to intervene. But as Debbie explained, “It really isn’t any better in a facility because each clinician has to supervise so many patients at once. That’s where the technology comes in. We need to install an alarm, which is a one-time purchase, connected to a sensor that would detect the blood and sound the alarm to alert the patient if VND occurred. The sensor is disposable, but it costs less than $3, and that is a tiny fraction of the cost savings that home dialysis brings in the first place, because the most expensive part of dialysis is the care provider in the clinic.”

We’re very thankful to have nurses like Debbie watching over dialysis. This is why Debbie promotes our HD03 Dialysis Monitor. It quantifies delivered flow and recirculation, allowing clinicians to know whether their patient is receiving their prescribed dialysis flow. The HD03 also precisely measures access flow as well, because without that number, well-meaning clinicians are flying blind, and patients can be at risk of an access thrombosis due to low flow, or potential cardiac overload from high flow. Both happen every day without anyone being aware.

Click here to see why Debbie is such a staunch proponent of the HD03.

And click here if you’d like to read the original article by CBS news.

We thank Debbie for standing against VND and all the other dangerous acronyms that lurk in the medical shadows…

Thanks for reading,

               Transonic Systems, Inc.

                              The Measure of Better Results.