LETTER
The pressure is on! The danger of a broken blow off valve on a bag valve mask
Neonatal Unit, Directorate of Women & Children’s Health, Forth Park Hospital, Kirkcaldy KY2 5AH, Scotland, UK
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr Ainsworth
sean.ainsworth@faht.scot.nhs.uk
Keywords: resuscitation equipment; bag valve mask; pressure relief valve
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
We would like to draw the reader’s attention to a potentially dangerous occurrence with bag valve mask systems when repair and reassembly is carried out incorrectly. Bag valve masks are in common use in neonatal and paediatric resuscitations1,2 and incorporate a pressure relief valve to prevent excessive pressures being delivered.
In this case, checking of a Laerdal paediatric (500 ml) resuscitator (catalogue number 86005033) before use revealed that the blow off valve was not working despite the initial cursory inspection failing to detect any problem (fig 1
). Closer inspection revealed that the yellow over-ride button had been broken off and the device reassembled in such a way that the button was placed inside the valve the wrong way round (fig 1 inset). The resuscitator was taken out of use and subjected to further testing. The problem was then brought to the attention of the manufacturer.
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Figure 1 The "odd" appearance of | |||||||||
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