You find out the oral contrast product your department routinely uses isn’t available. Cases are still on the schedule. Patients are still coming in. And now your team needs an alternative that works for the patient, the technologist, and the radiologist. Finding something you can use is only part of the decision.
A change in oral contrast protocol can affect how much preparation your technologists do, the patient’s drinking experience, and what your radiologists encounter when they sit down to interpret the exam. Those considerations came through clearly in a recent discussion among imaging professionals evaluating alternatives when their usual oral contrast option became unavailable.
If you already have to reconsider your protocol, it may be worth asking a bigger question:
Could the change actually make some part of your existing workflow better?
That’s part of the thinking behind Breeza® for Use with Oral Iodinated Contrast, a beverage designed with both the patient drinking experience and technologist workflow in mind as well as better patient outcomes.
What does the change mean for your technologists?
For a CT technologist, changing an oral contrast protocol isn’t as simple as swapping one product for another.
Depending on the alternative, your team may need to measure and mix contrast with water, add flavoring, prepare additional supplies, or spend more time helping patients through the drinking protocol. Those individual steps may not sound significant, but repeated across a busy CT schedule, they become part of the workload.
That makes ease of preparation worth considering.
Breeza for Use with Oral Iodinated Contrast comes in a 16 oz bottle that is intentionally underfilled, leaving room to add oral iodinated contrast directly to the bottle. Its tropical fruit flavor and bitterness blocker are designed to eliminate the need for a separate flavoring step.
For the technologist, that can mean a more straightforward preparation process and fewer steps between getting the patient ready and getting the exam underway.
What does it mean for your patients?
Your patients experience an oral contrast protocol very differently. They aren’t thinking about department efficiency or preparation steps. They’re thinking about what you just handed them and whether they can drink it.
Facilities looking for alternatives are considering not only what they could mix with oral contrast, but also how to make those mixtures more palatable for patients.
Taste and overall drinking experience can be important considerations when evaluating a new protocol, particularly when patients need to consume a prescribed volume within a certain timeframe.
Breeza was developed with that experience in mind. Its tropical fruit flavor and bitterness blocker help address the taste of iodinated contrast while giving departments a consistent oral prep rather than relying on separate flavoring solutions.
And when something is easier for the patient to drink, it may also mean less coaching for the technologist trying to keep the exam moving.
What does it mean for your radiologists?
There’s one more person who should have a voice in the decision: the radiologist.
The discussion around changing oral contrast protocols raised questions about image characteristics, opacification, visualization of finer detail, and the amount of windowing and leveling required during interpretation.
Those considerations are easy to overlook when the immediate problem is simply finding an available alternative. But your radiologists ultimately work with the images produced by that protocol to diagnose every day.
Before making a long-term change, consider bringing them into the conversation. Ask what they are seeing with the new protocol, whether it provides the bowel opacification and consistency they need, and how the change affects their experience in the reading room.
The best alternative isn’t necessarily the one that simply gets the patient through today’s exam. It’s the one that makes sense across the entire workflow.
A supply change may start the conversation
No CT department wants to suddenly rethink a familiar protocol.
But if circumstances are already forcing your team to consider something different, it can also be an opportunity to look at a workflow that may not have been questioned in years.
How much preparation does it require from your technologists? What is the drinking experience like for your patients? And does it work well for the radiologists who ultimately interpret the study?
If you’re already being asked to reconsider your oral contrast protocol, don’t stop at “What can
we get?” Ask what will work best for the people who have to live with that decision every day.
A supply change may start the conversation. A better workflow may be the reason you don’t go back.
Interested in seeing how Breeza® for Use with Oral Iodinated Contrast could fit into your CT workflow? Request a complimentary sample for your team to evaluate.
