A mum whose daughter needs regular blood tests has said replacing needles with a new painless device has made a “huge difference” to a usually frightening and traumatic experience.<\/p>\n
The tests had been “horrible” for 16-year-old Abi, who has Down syndrome and autism, her mother Heather said, until the pilot of the Touch Activated Phlebotomy (TAP) device, which uses a vacuum to remove blood.<\/p>\n
The method was stumbled across by Dr Karen Perkins at Morecambe Bay Hospital NHS Trust, which has pioneered use of the technology with patients with learning disabilities.<\/p>\n
Dr Perkins said the “promising” devices could be rolled out nationally after attracting attention from national charities and NHS England.<\/p>\n
Until quite recently, blood tests for 16-year-old Abi meant trauma for everyone involved.<\/p>\n
“Abi would be quite distressed,” said her mum Heather.<\/p>\n
“She would typically curl up into a ball and would get herself onto the floor so that she physically couldn’t be got”. <\/p>\n
“She’d be crying out and it was horrible.”<\/p>\n
Abi needs blood checks every three to six months to monitor her hypothyroidism, which can lead to serious heart and other health problems if not properly treated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A mum whose daughter needs regular blood tests has said replacing needles with a new painless device has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-658905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}