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Improving the safety and efficiency of outpatient lumbar puncture service.

ABSTRACT: Lumbar puncture (LP) is a commonly performed procedure in diagnosis and management of neurological conditions. LP is generally safe, however there are a number of potentially serious complications, including epidural haematoma and cerebral herniation. The risks of these should be considered and minimised prior to undertaking LP. Our regional neuroscience centre provides an outpatient LP service for patients throughout southeast England. Referrals from distant hospitals meant there was frequently no access to important clinical information, including indication for LP, past medical history, or medication history until the day of the procedure, and no access to results of investigations such as coagulation profile, platelet count, or intracranial imaging. Furthermore, there was limited capacity or time available in the day ward to perform these tests prior to LP. As a result, patients were either having LPs cancelled on the day of the procedure, were delayed by several hours on the day of the procedure for investigations, or were subject to the risk of having the LP performed without the knowledge of these key safety indicators. To address this issue we implemented an LP safety checklist to be completed by referring neurologists, providing details of the patient's medical history and results of investigations performed locally. In doing this, we increased the proportion of patients with an available platelet count prior to LP from 25% to 89%, and available coagulation profile from 18% to 82%. In addition, we saw a qualitative increase in the confidence of junior doctors in the safety of the LP clinic, as measured by a survey taken before and after the implementation of this system. This simple intervention made a rapid and remarkable difference to the safety and efficiency of this outpatient LP clinic. We would encourage other units to adopt this approach to address similar problems in a variety of outpatient settings.

SUBMITTER: Sweeney M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4949615 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Improving the safety and efficiency of outpatient lumbar puncture service.

Sweeney Mark M Al-Diwani Adam A Hadden Robert R

BMJ quality improvement reports 20160225 1

Lumbar puncture (LP) is a commonly performed procedure in diagnosis and management of neurological conditions. LP is generally safe, however there are a number of potentially serious complications, including epidural haematoma and cerebral herniation. The risks of these should be considered and minimised prior to undertaking LP. Our regional neuroscience centre provides an outpatient LP service for patients throughout southeast England. Referrals from distant hospitals meant there was frequently ...[more]

PMID: 27493745

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Project description:Neuroinflammation is evident and one of the primary induced responses after central nervous system (CNS) injury, lumbar puncture and CNS surgery. In rare cases, complications could arise after the lumbar puncture or CNS surgery leading to inflammation, bleeding or other problems such as cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leakage. The present dataset describes the occurrence of such a condition after the dura breakage or postoperative complication leading to the development of neuroinflammation in the adult Wistar rats. Therefore, objective of the study is to report such a rare condition and detect the most reliable glial proteins upregulated 2-3 weeks after the lumbar puncture which may help the neuroscience community to a better understanding their cause of action. In response to neuroinflammation, glial cells leak into the extracellular space, where they can be identified in the CSF or serum and may act as diagnostic biomarkers. Laminectomy was performed at the thoraco-lumbar (T12-L1) region and the dura was punctured. After that, the exposed part was covered with silica gel and adhesive followed by dental cement. The skin was closed using sterile sutures. After, the rats were given buprenorphine (0.05 mg/kg, every 8 h for 3 days) and carprofen (5 mg/kg, once a day for 5 days) as analgesic and anti-inflammatory and baytril (5 mg/kg, once a day for 10 days) as antibiotic drugs. Note, the buprenorphine and lidocaine were also given before starting the procedure. After the laminectomy, the functional outcomes of the rats were tested (starting from the day of surgery to the last day) and the rats which were locomoting normally using all the limbs were included in the study. In case of any decompression, the functional outcomes showing any kind of laming or partial paralysis of hindlimbs were excluded from the study. Unexpected neuroinflammation has occurred 2-3 weeks after performing the given procedure. Data presented in the article implicate active microglia measured by using protein biomarker such as Iba-1 [1, 3] and astrocytes measured by using Glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) [2, 3] and S100 (strongly targets S100B and weakly A1) [7, 8] in the CSF collected two-three weeks after the laminectomy and dura breakage from the adult rats. Later paraformaldehyde (PFA) fixed spinal cord slices were also collected from the animals and immunolabelled with the same biomarkers. Western blots were performed with the collected CSF which showed high expression of glial markers such as GFAP, Iba-1 and S100 which has shown to target S100B with no expression of A1 (or A2, play an important role in neuroprotection) astrocytes which have recently been shown to be produced by microglia at the site of injury [9]. However, S100B [10] and GFAP [2] are known to be adequately discharged by the distinct cells in stress conditions which seems to occur in the present report. In addition, the spinal slices immunolabelled with the same biomarkers also showed increased expression of glia. Cross-talk between microglia-astrocyte in CNS stress is crucial for the neurons to survive and function after the injury. Reactive microglia (shown by high Iba-1 expression) leading to microgliosis comprise the first line of defense to phagocytose the dead cells [11]. Astrocytes act as the second line of defense leading to a process known as astrogliosis and upregulate GFAP and S100B to limit the damage [12]. Further studies are needed to explain the molecular mechanism/s of different astrocytes release such as A2 and their interaction with microglia after the lumbar puncture.

Dataset Information

Improving the safety and efficiency of outpatient lumbar puncture service.

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Improving the safety and efficiency of outpatient lumbar puncture service.

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