New Medical Tape Reduces Pain for Newborns, Older Adults

November 14, 2012

A Premature Baby in India has medical tape placed on her face.

From VOA Learning English, this is the Health Report in Special English.

Babies born with serious medical conditions often spend their first days in the intensive-care unit of a hospital. Medical workers put tape on the babies to hold down tubes and electronic devices. Experts say having to change the tape daily or remove it when those babies are well enough to go home can be painful and even dangerous.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology says more than one million people suffer skin injuries from medical tape removal each year. But now there is a new kind of tape that is much softer.

Jeff Karp helped create the new tape. Doctor Harp works the Center for Regenerative Therapeutics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. He says newborns moved to intensive-care Unit are usually very sick.

“Children in these units are, are really just wrapped in these tapes, [which are] constantly needing to be replaced. These are really important to secure devices to the skin for monitoring. So, for example, temperature probes, endotracheal tubes to maintain breathing, as well as EKG leads for monitoring a, a pulse.”

Removing medical tape can be painful. It also may damage the skin of newborn babies. Doctor Karp says this is one of the biggest problems facing hospitals.