Fantoms
HEEL STICKS: RETHINKING A LONGSTANDING PRACTICE
One of the many painful indignities that babies have to put up with in the intensive care environment is heel sticks for blood sampling. We have all been brought up to obey the principle that there are “safe” and “unsafe” parts of the heel, with the “unsafe” midline being so because the distance from the skin surface to the calcaneus was thought to be too small. How refreshing that Arena et al have revisited this dogma, bringing to bear some modern ultrasound technology to make direct in vivo measurements, and finding
that the dogma is simply wrong. This paper deserves to become widely known and cited, and to influence practice among all
who use the heel as a source of blood for analysis, including neonatal nurses and midwives.
See page 328
GLUCOSE CONCENTRATIONS: RETHINKING THEIR MEASUREMENT
Can we move on from heel sticks in the measurement …
