Patient Safety - NxStage Medical - MHRA reference: 2017/001/018/401/011

[Gerry Boyle]

NxStage Medical 10 October 2019 Dialysis, haemodialysis Model: NX1000-3 MHRA reference: 2017/001/018/401/011 This release through MHRA seems to place a greater reliance on the use of appropriate scales at home. Does this mean we should look at a more appropriate class of scales, with annual calibration, instead of the bathroom scales that I suspect most if not all of us use? Any thought? Gerry

[Roger Moore]

Hi Gerry

Good point raised about the scales.

Here at New Cross we insist that Class III 'M' rated scales are purchased by the Trust for our home patients. Annual verification of these scales are carried out.

[Garry]

As per Roger's post for us also.  The link seems to taking me to an issue with some other equipment.

I have also heard of other units reporting this.  I passed this onto our home training team a long while ago and asked them to be vigilant to any weight loss discrepancies.  Unfortunately, with a managed service like this, the technical team are out of the loop and, I feel, issues that would be detected in-house can go undetected/underreported.

Gerry, do patients see similar weight loss errors with their 'own' scales with you in-house managed dialysis equipment?

[Gerry Boyle]

Hi Garry, I've removed the second link, don't know what happened there.   Just use the MHRA ref link.   Useful info though. Regarding patient weight loss, it is not an issue in our unit and I'm unsure which unit(s) have flagged this up with MHRA to get the FSN response.   It is potentially an on-going issue and might result in significant cost pressure that didn't exist previously. We only have a maximum of 4 home haemo patients but have a higher PD population who will also be affected by increased cost of calibrated scales.   Anyone had actual experience in their home dialysis population of this please share.Ta, Gerry