Early experience with the Thopaz+ chest drainage system – is this a new era in the management of post-cardiotomy bleeding?

Introduction
Monitoring postoperative drainage is a key aspect of patient assessment in the early postoperative period. Accurate assessment of drainage allows rapid diagnosis of postoperative bleeding, preventing excessive hemoglobin drop and cardiac tamponade. However, traditional methods of mediastinal drainage appear to be inaccurate and measurement can often be subjective, delaying the procedure.

Aim
To demonstrate our initial experience with a digital chest drainage system that can be used to closely monitor postoperative drainage.

Material and methods
The Thopaz+ system allows manual regulation of negative pressure in the chest. The digital system analyzes the current and long-term values of the drainage, which facilitates therapeutic decisions. The advantage of the system is its mobility, without the need for built-in vacuums in the hospital wall. This allows early rehabilitation of the patient, which is crucial in the perioperative period. The Thopaz system has been used in 42 consecutive patients in all types of cardiac surgery procedures with good key results.

Results
We did not observe any complications with the system and the learning curve of the staff was very fast, both for the physicians and the operating room nurses, intensive care nurses and postoperative nurses.

Conclusions
The first experiences with the Topaz+ system were very positive. The system brings a lot of safety and comfort to the cardiac surgical care we provide. These conclusions are consistent with data published in randomized trials.