AccuVein AV300 Praised as "Revolutionary Device" in News Santé (Europe)

July 12, 2010   News Santé (Europe) – Dr. Erard de Hemricourt – Nuclear Medicine, Dunkirk, France

A few months ago, I wrote a paper on some technological innovations that could impact our way of practicing medicine. One of these, the AccuVein AV300, has recently been officially granted the right to be sold in France and after asking to the french company AVF Perimedical, we generously received the AV300 for a whole week of exhilarating testing.

 The Accuvein AV300 comes with a certain price tag that will limit its availability essentially to the medical world (mostly clinics and hospitals). So, don’t expect to stumble on it in your neighborhood drugstore. This technology is based on the emission of infrared and near-infrared light as laser waves that will allow the direct visualisation of the subcutaneous venous network. Depending on the presence (or absence) of oxygen in the hemoglobin, the red and infrared light will be more or less absorbed and the venous network located just under the skin will appear right in front of you. You just have to direct the light perpendicularly on the skin (with a pretty easy learning curve) et voilà. 

You need also to respect a certain distance between the device and the skin in order to increase the efficacy of the scanning.

 Upon receiving the AccuVein, we observed that the handling was very easy and no special training was needed to manipulate it. There are mainly 3 kinds of scanning modes depending more or less on the quality of the venous network and also on the patient himself (baby, adult, skinny, obese, …). During our test week, we used the AV300 on many patients mostly adults and none of them was very muscular. On the contrary, we had a lot of obese patients, sometimes with skin oedema and very difficult venous access. The first observations were very positive and most of the time, the patients (and some doctors also) believed it was science fiction ! After these first emotions, we analyzed the real medical impact and interest of the device.

 For all patients, the AccuVein helped us to locate easily, precisely and quickly the veins which were both visible and invisible to our eyes. As every member of our staff has a great deal of experience with patients, each of us used first his own fingers to locate the veins and in a second time the AV300. At the end of the week, we had the same conclusions. For the ‘easy’ patients, we don’t need the device because the veins are easy to see or to feel. Do not forget that even if the AV300 can ‘illuminate’ the subcutaneous veins, the ones located deeper in the skin remain invisible to the device and sometimes these one are the good veins to prick !

 But, from time to time, we cannot feel the veins and the patient has to be pricked two, three or even four times (by a different staff member). This is the situation when the AV300 helped us to quickly locate the difficult veins and avoid the often painful trials.

 To conclude, I just would say that after having used the AV300 for a whole week, it becomes  difficult to envision the future without it. This is not a simple toy or something for the geek. It is a real professional medical instrument that merits its place in each medical department.