CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (CBS19 NEWS) — For years, NICU nurses have struggled with preventing premature babies from yanking on their breathing tubes, a serious problem impacting these babies.
A University of Virginia Health System nurse is providing a solution to this problem with a special “hug.”
Tricia Cady has always had a special love for babies.
“I love working with babies because they are so pure. They’ve had no bad choices in their lives,” she said.
The nurse says she would lie in bed at night thinking of ways to stop a NICU nurse’s nightmare of her little patient pulling tubes from their nose or mouth.
“When that tube gets pulled out, that’s an unplanned extubation,” Cady explained.
Cady, a nurse of 22 years, says unplanned extubation rates have not budged in 30 years.
“That really upset me because it was a very vulnerable patient population,” she said. “Research says we should strive for this to be a never event.”
After over two decades in the profession, she went back to school. During a class assignment, she transformed her passion for babies into action.
“What can I do to try to contain their hands so they are developmental sound and they’re hands are tucked with free movement,” Cady asked.
After rattling the idea around in her head, she came up with the idea of the “Cady Hug.”
“I named it the hug because I just pictured myself picking them up and hugging them, protecting,” Cady said.
What was once just an idea in her began quickly taking shape.
She received a grant from the Ivy Biomedical Innovation fund, which connected her with a UVA design student. The student helped her idea grow from a simple piece of cloth she sewed together to her first prototype.
The “Cady Hug” is made like a vest, embracing the baby with soft stretchy material and securing the infant’s arms.
Cady says she hopes that her invention spreads nationwide and that we see a drop in unplanned extubation rates.
What makes the device so important is that when babies pull out tubes, it can cause long-term health problems, such as lung disease.
The Cady Hug still has a long way to go before it’s ever used in the NICU. It must go through and pass various tests.
