This Week In Sickle Cell News September 21st to the 27th

By Sean Marshall

Great news for those in the Boston area. It was reported by Eurek Alert, a science news website, that Boston University Medical Center has reduced its wait times specifically targeting sickle cell sufferers. It was stated that the time that those who come to the Boston University medical center specifically suffering from sickle cell disease have to wait has dropped “more than 50 percent, from an average of 56 minutes to 23 minutes, from triage to administration of the first dose of pain medication.” This was done due to an emergency department changes made from September 2010 to April 2014 by the pediatric emergency department. This was accomplished by focusing on four areas of improvement.

These four areas were “the development of a standardized time-specific protocol that guided care when the patient is in the emergency department; using intranasal fentanyl - a pain medication taken through the nose - as a first-line pain medication since placing intravenous lines (IVs) using an online "calculator" to quickly determine appropriate pain medication doses in line with what is used nationally for children in the emergency department; and providing education to both emergency providers and families on this work.”

When they put all of these practices to the test data reveled that discharged patients increased from “ 32 to 48 percent.” There was no increase in patient return. They have also been praised by the medical community and are now being used as an example across the united states on how to lower the risks of death in sickle cell sufferers.

The original article can be found here: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-09/bumc-bre091715.php

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