How does a urinary catheter work?

[scilearner]

Hello everyone,

1) Now in this catheter, how does passing saline through the ballon port inflate the ballon. Are there pores at the end of the tube, which allows fluid to go into the balloon and inflate it.

1) What is the purpose of a 3 way catheter. If you want to clear out an infection I can understand you can send saline through one of the ports, but can't we do the same thing with a 2 way catheter. If we send saline through the ballon port in a 2 way catheter, wouldn't it fill the bladder after inflating the ballon and clear it.

2) Why does a 3 way catheter have 2 ballons as shown in pic.

Thanks

[physica]

Since this isn’t really a science question I will have to answer through personal experience. I’ve worked in emergency medicine for 4 years now and lost count of how many of these things go wrong but they are needed. In order answer your questions I have to correct the following, the pore at the end does not inflate the balloon but drains the bladder. Urine passes through the whole tube and into a collection connected at the urine drainage port.

 

1) Injecting 10ml through the balloon port will inflate the balloon to prevent the catheter from slipping out of the bladder. There’s another small tube that goes inside and connects to the balloon.

 

2) The purpose of a 3 way catheter isn’t to wash out infection. In fact general clinical experience will tell you that anything invasive to the patient will increase the risk of infection as you can't guarantee sterility. At the moment there is a big drive to reduce the amount of catheters inserted in order to reduce the amount of infections. Biofilms can also grow in catheters, I would never give one of my patients a catheter for an infection as it would make it worse. Emergency surgery is accompanied with preemptive antibiotics and this is also the case in some catheter insertions. Let’s say a patient had bladder cancer, or trauma or some other reason why there is blood in the bladder. The blood will form clots and block the urethra. The bladder will swell and pressure will build up on the kidneys. The kidneys will then fail and the patient won’t be able to excrete toxins. Sometimes calcium build-up and other reasons cause blockage but the 3 way catheter is mainly used to wash out and prevent blocking of the urethra.

 

3) As for the 2 balloons I have no idea though I have realised that you have to inject 20ml when inserting one.

Edited March 7, 2014 by physica