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Most heart surgery patients at Mission never know it, but a new computer software program is helping protect them in the first critical hours of recovery.
The Endotool software-based system isn’t a medical gadget. It’s information technology that addresses a silent but serious problem: spikes in blood glucose, more commonly known as blood sugar. Many patients have high blood glucose levels after heart surgery, even if they don’t have diabetes. High blood glucose that isn’t immediately corrected can leave a patient more vulnerable to poor healing, infections, and longer hospital stays. Patients in the Mission Cardiovascular Intensive Care and Recovery Units who have high blood glucose levels after heart surgery are managed with guidance from Endotool. Endotool recommends precise, patient-specific dosages of medication, and its timing, to keep blood glucose levels within healthy range . The patients achieve faster blood sugar control than ever before. The Endotool is used for open-heart surgery patients because they are especially likely to have spikes in their blood sugar. Its use is just one part of a hospital wide effort to prevent all surgical complications. Mission is part of the national SCIP program – the Surgical Care Improvement Program – which is working to better prevent infections and other complications. "The Endo-tool has allowed us to manage blood sugars faster and more tightly than we ever have before,” said Craig Harris, Manager of the Mission CV-ICU. “Our Heart Program here at Mission strives to bring the most innovative cardiac care to the residents of Western North Carolina. The Endo-tool is just one of many examples demonstrating how that our use of cutting-edge technology directly benefits the patient." (Images provided by 2008 Southern Living, artist Miles Melton, and EcoBuilders.)
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