Trick of the trade: Eye irrigation setup

Morgan lens are placed to irrigate eyes splashed with foreign substances. Whenever I place them, images of horror and torture movies arise. Especially for patients who aren’t used to having something touch their eyes like contact lens, the Morgan lens gives them the heeby-jeebies.

For the past several years, I’ve stopped using Morgan lens and have started using something that all Emergency Departments have — nasal cannulas for oxygen administration. They are perfect for high-volume eye irrigation.

• Instead of attaching the nasal cannula to an oxygen port, attach it to the end of IV tubing, which in turn is attached to a 1 liter normal saline bag. The IV tubing fits snuggly into the nasal cannula tubing.

• Rest the nasal cannula prongs over the patient’s nasal bridge to irrigate the eyes.
• Then open up the flood gates!
• To avoid a huge deluge of fluid onto the patient and floor, be sure to have a way to catch the fluid. Some place multitudes of towels around the patient’s head to absorb the fluid.
• As an alternative solution to towels, I like Dr. Stella Yiu’s (Univ of Toronto) adaptation of my cut-out basin approach for irrigating scalp wounds. To avoid overflow spillage, she rests a Yankauer suction tip at the bottom of the basin to collect the irrigation fluid.

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