An Evolving New Paradigm in Blood Warming: “A Bridge To Rapid Infusers”

Rapid infusers are a great option for treating patients with severe hemorrhage. However, they require significant commitment from the hospitals: they are expensive to purchase, expensive to operate, and expensive to maintain. As importantly, they require significant ongoing investment in training so as to keep the staff adequately comfortable using them. Too often emergency personnel would avoid using their state-of-the-art rapid infusers simply because they are overwhelmed with their complex operation and time-consuming troubleshooting. In today’s environment, that requires hospitals to rely on ‘travelling nurses’ to complement their staff. the situation is worsened since continuous education on rapid infusers is simply impractical.

Therefore, a growing number of hospitals are approaching us with a similar request: “we need a bridge to the rapid infusers”, they say. Indeed, there are other more practical solutions to transfuse warm blood fast. When used with flow-inducing devices such as pressure bag, hand pump, push-pull, electro-mechanical pump, or LifeFlow infuser, the Warrior line of next-generation blood warmers is an excellent bridge to the rapid infusers.  The following paragraphs introduce some of the key benefits of the Warrior over rapid infusers.

• Speed. It is important to note that in over 95% of the cases rapid infusers are not required.  The patient will receive anywhere between 1 and 3 units of blood and rushed to the OR. In such instances, we celebrate that the Warrior delivers 1-3 units of warmed blood to patients much faster than rapid infusers, simply because set up time is reduced to just a few seconds.
• Simplicity. Moreover, unlike rapid infusers, anyone can be trained to operate the Warrior. This removes the pressure that only a few expert nurses can operate the device flawlessly, as is often the case with rapid infusers. In addition, and unlike rapid infusers, troubleshooting the Warrior is fast and easy.  The Warrior’s simplicity has even greater value in situations of a mass casualty event since a stretched medical staff will greatly struggle to operate multiple rapid infusing devices concurrently.
• Portability. One additional key advantage of the Warrior over rapid infusers is its portability. With rapid infusers, warm blood cannot be administered during a patient’s transfer to the next level of care, whereas the Warrior has been designed to facilitate patient’s transports (from field to ED, trauma, OR, and ICU). Unlike rapid infusers, the Warrior can be simply attached to the bed during patient’s transfer from ED to OR, thus freeing the hands of caregivers to perform more important stuff.
• Unique Continuum of Emergency Care Proposition. The portability aspect enables a unique continuum of care proposition, whereby the same consumable can be used across the entire continuum of emergency care, thus simplifying patient handoff between emergency settings and reducing costs. If fully adopted by the hospital, further ROI benefits can be attained by streamlining training efforts, reducing dependency on dedicated staff, reducing spare part inventory, and eliminate monthly service calls and calibration endeavors that raid infusers typically require. If the hospital has a critical care transport team, treatment with the Warrior can commence even prior to the arrival of the patient to the ED.
• Pediatric Applications. Another benefit of the Warrior is its ability to operate even with small-size catheters, designed for pediatric patients. Rapid infusers are limited to larger catheters which is part of the reason that a growing number of pediatric hospitals have adopted the Warriors along with the LifeFlow infusion device.
• Maintenance Free. The Warrior does not require any routine service or any annual calibration.  It requires just one inspection every 5 years. Rapid infusers typically demand monthly service and calibration endeavors that overload the biomed team.
• Aluminum Free. The Warrior is aluminum free; some rapid infusers contain aluminum in their fluid path.
• Improved ROI. Finally, cost — both capital and consumables — is another huge benefit of the Warrior over rapid infusers.  A rapid infuser may cost $30k. At this price you can get approximately 8 Warrior AC devices…  A rapid infuser’s consumables are in the range of hundreds of dollars, considerably higher than the Warrior’s Compact Disposable Unit. There are also significant benefits related to reduction of indirect costs, such as simplified training, elimination of spare inventory, and elimination of complex service requirements, to name just a few.

To summarize, even the best-equipped medical centers are too often reluctant to use their rapid infusers due to their complexity. In such cases, therefore, the patients will get cold blood/fluid. While the Warrior is not a rapid infuser, it will outperform rapid infusers in greater than 95% of the cases, when just a few units of blood/fluid are required. In such cases, the Warrior will perform the job faster, more effectively, and more economically than the over-sized, complex, and expensive to operate rapid infusers.  Even in those few cases that rapid infusers are required, the Warrior can be used initially so as to accelerate the delivery of the first few units of blood to the patient.  In all these cases, the Warrior acts as an optimal bridge to the rapid infusers. Contact us for more information.