Análisis del uso de Oxigenoterapia en Internación: Aplicación de un protocolo de control

introduction: the application of oxygen therapy has the same requirements for supervision as any other drug. objective: demonstrate the way in which the oxygen therapy has to be performed in hospitalized patients, define the time in days of the oxygen therapy use in these patients, and observe the level of compliance with the prescription and the monthly oxygen consumption. compare the results obtained with the use of a control protocol for oxygen therapy. material and methods: the study had two parts. the first part was done to document how the oxygen was used. with this purpose, 223 patients (who had medical prescription of continuous oxygen therapy) were recruited and studied between may 2008 and october 2008 in the instituto cardiovascular de rosario (icr). the second part was carried out to evaluate the use of an oxygen control protocol. in this part, 251 patients were recruited from may 2009 to october 2009. during this study the patients excluded were: those who were under mechanical ventilation with an oxygen supplement device of variable performance, those under oxygen therapy with 50% of fio2 (fraction of inspired oxygen) that did not reach an oxygen saturation higher than 92% and those who had the medical prescription of intermittent oxygen therapy. the variables that were followed up were: beginning and end of the oxygen therapy prescription, if the medical prescription was followed, the fio2 selected, the oxygen flow registered and the oxygen saturation. once the study was performed, the costs, oxygen consumption, compliance with medical prescription, duration of oxygen therapy and the relationship between fio2 and the oxygen flow delivered were compared between the two parts of the study. results: the first part of the study showed that 87.39% of the oxygen use was inadequate. the oxygen therapy medical prescription was met in 59.50% of patients in 2008 and in 91.50% in 2009. the time measured in days was of 4.1 +/- 4 days in 2008 and of 2.7 ± 2.6 days