Vancive Medical Technologies™ (formerly Avery Dennison Medical Solutions) recently introduced BeneHold medical tape strips, which can enable clinicians to reduce tape waste, help guard against the spread of infection and satisfy certain compliance regulations associated with dialysis care. The strips come in perforated sheets that allow tape right-sizing. Each tape strip is equipped with handling tabs, which help facilitate aseptic application when being used with an aseptic technique. The properties of the medical tape strips allow high moisture and oxygen transmission, which contribute to long-term wear and minimize skin maceration.

Compared with conventional roll tapes, the tape strips can offer protection against the spread of infection. Rolls of medical tape are often left on counters, used on multiple patients, shared among clinicians and applied without gloved hands. A paper published by Drs. Redelmeier and Livesley¹ reported that 74% of tape specimens collected from one hospital were colonized by pathogenic bacteria. In 41% of the samples, the bacterial colonies were too numerous to count. The BeneHold tape strips’ sheet format can help address these concerns by giving clinicians the ability to customize the amount of tape used for each patient or procedure, helping reduce tape sharing between patients and clinicians. The sheet format also eliminates roll tapes’ sticky edges, which can trap fuzz and contaminants.

BeneHold medical tape strips can help medical administrators meet dialysis treatment guidelines issued by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (42 CFR Parts 405, 410, 413, et al). Regulations state that items that cannot be cleaned and disinfected (e.g., adhesive tape) should be dedicated for use only on a single patient. Because BeneHold medical tape strips come in sheet form, dialysis practitioners are able to take into the patient care area a dedicated amount of tape per procedure, ensuring efficient compliance with regulatory guidelines. 

For more information, visit http://vancive.averydennison.com.

REFERENCE
1. Redelmeier, M.D.; Donald A., Livesly, M.D.; and Nigel J., “Adhesive Tape and Intravascular-Catheter-Associated Infections” JGIM, June 1999, Vol. 14.