Premium
The lure of the Lüer connector: Non‐Lüer connectors in regional anaesthesia
Author(s) -
Wiepking F. S. S.,
Van Zundert A. A. J.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
acta anaesthesiologica scandinavica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.738
H-Index - 107
eISSN - 1399-6576
pISSN - 0001-5172
DOI - 10.1111/aas.13840
Subject(s) - medicine , harm , universality (dynamical systems) , cable gland , regional anaesthesia , schema (genetic algorithms) , patient safety , medical emergency , health care , surgery , law , computer science , telecommunications , physics , quantum mechanics , machine learning , political science
Health service professionals do not have perfect vigilance. There will always be the possibility that a serious untoward incident can occur due to crossover injections of medication being administered via the wrong route. The universality of the Lüer connector made it very easy to connect several medical devices for different therapeutic uses. Although this was considered a bonus, it also showed the downside as a string of incidents, leading to permanent harm and even death, occurred, warranting actions to prevent the chance of misconnections and wrong‐route injections. The International Organisation for Standardisation introduced specific ISO 80 369 connectors for use in different medical systems, with the ISO 80369‐6 series of standards specifically designed to improve safety in regional anaesthesia. Human error can never be completely eliminated, but the risk of a patient inadvertently suffering from an inadvertent wrong‐route injection can be reduced through the use of new ‘fit and no‐fit’ technology. This article focuses on the universality of the Lüer connector and the introduction of the newly engineered non‐Lüer connectors, for specific use in medical systems.