Over the past 2 years we have been working very hard on our new innovation Airglove. We always knew it had great potential to help patients in hospital especially the most difficult to cannulate in oncology. We have been working with NHS Innovations South East and The Maidstone & Tunbridge Well NHS trust who have just completed their “Service Evaluation of the Airglove Patient Warming Device”.

Patients were selected who had known difficulties in accessing veins for blood samples or cannulation by the oncology nurses to try Airglove. Eighty patients were chosen regardless of age, sex, gender, medical condition and did provide a cohort with a wide range of cancers. There are so many reasons why they needed heated cannulation such as poor veins due to long term chemotherapy. However, the majority of patients 53 out of 80 used Airglove on the standard heat setting No.2 which is 35.5c with a further 24 patients requiring the higher setting No.3 which is 38.5%. Out of the 80 patients 70 were successfully cannulated on the 1st attempt after using Airglove which is 87.5% successful result.

The report concluded venepuncture to obtain blood for cannulation is one of the most commonly performed clinical procedures. Local warming is known to facilitate the insertion of peripheral venous cannulas reducing both time and number of attempts required. This in turn saves on nursing time, consumable costs and over all well-being of the patients who when asked reported “very comfortable compared to the hot water method”.
We look forward to working with more hospitals and our unique innovative CE marked medical device which is currently in use in the following hospitals:

• UCLH, London
• Royal Marsden, London
• Queens, Romford
• Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells#
• Royal Stoke

If you would like to view the whole Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust Service Evaluation of the Airglove Patient Warming Device
click here