Shower with your biliary drain

This is a series of videos showing how I was trained to care for my wife’s biliary drainage tube.

My wife had a liver resection to remove metastatic neuroendocrine tumours. Five days post-surgery she had a sudden onset of severe pain from her abdomen all the way up to her right shoulder. She was admitted back into hospital for a liver infection. The treatment included placing 2 biliary drains.

Although I was trained by the doctors on how to care for my wife’s biliary drain, once at home I started feeling less confident. I looked online in hopes of finding some resources to guide me through the steps, but I wasn’t able to find much helpful information. Luckily we have an amazing medical team, who were always available for all of my questions.

I made this video series for others, who have been trained by their medical practitioners, but may benefit from a resource such as this. Remember, this is not a tutorial nor does this video replace medical advice – it only shows how I was trained on biliary care. If I do it differently than you were trained, always follow the advice of your own medical team.

Some of the problems/questions that we ran into during our biliary drain care:

1. At 10:30pm on a Saturday part of the PTC drainage tube started leaking. We discovered that the plastic had split. We had to decide whether or not to go to the hospital as we were concerned about contamination and a risk of infection.

The specialist told us to tape it up tightly to eliminate any leaks. Unfortunately this is the only remedy other than replacing the entire drain apparatus via another biliary drain procedure.

2. The discharge changed from translucent to opaque, it also appeared to have become thick. The doctor sent us to the emergency room where I was given antibiotics for a possible infection.

While the specialist was not alarmed by the output of the catheter, he felt that being on antibiotics was a good idea. He told us that discharge can vary in colour and consistency since “…all sorts of sludge” can come out of the biliary drain post liver surgery.

If you have changes in biliary drain discharge coupled with symptoms such as fever, pain, chills, nausea, vomiting etc., do not wait to see your doctor, go directly to your nearest hospital emergency room

Amazon.com links

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