While recent adhesive advances have incrementally improved critical tube securement performance, clinicians are still facing challenges to safe securement under hard-to-adhere-to conditions like diaphoretic skin, saliva and humidity. To fill this clinician need, 3M developed 3M Durapore Advanced Surgical Tape, a high-adhesion medical tape designed to provide safe, reliable critical tube securement in challenging conditions like high-moisture environments.
Unplanned extubations or dislodgement can significantly impact clinical outcomes, patient care quality and cost targets, so it’s incredibly important that clinicians are confident that the tape they choose will perform.
As part of 3M’s ongoing mission to redefine securement performance, adhesive scientists met with numerous clinicians to learn more about the real-world obstacles they encounter securing critical tubes. The scientists replicated the conditions that most frequently led to securement failure – such as humid, moist environments and various surface textures – and put the tape through 3M’s most rigorous medical adhesive research, development and testing process to date to make sure vast performance improvements were achieved in high-adhesion to skin, tubing and the tape itself.
According to 3M Healthcare, laboratory testing showed Durapore Advanced Tape outperformed competitive tapes in three key securement areas: adhesion to tubing, adhesion to skin after moisture occurs and edge lift. In a study of pull force needed to dislodge a tube from diaphoretic/moist skin, Durapore Advanced Tape required 44% more force on average than other tapes, 3M reported.
Durapore Advanced Tape’s design addresses three key performance needs to help clinicians safely secure critical tubes:
- Exceptional Adhesion Performance: Durapore Advanced Tape maintains adhesion on oily or diaphoretic skin. The tape is also unique in that it is not made with natural rubber latex, yet provides better adhesion characteristics than latex-containing tapes2.
- Minimal Edge Lift: Tape edge lift can lead to adhesion failure, increasing the risk of extubation or dislodgement. In several studies, Durapore Advanced Tape demonstrated minimal edge lift or adhesive weakening after 72 hours of wear.
- Adhesion to Skin, Tubes, Devices and Itself: Successful critical tube securement requires adhesives that can stick to multiple surface textures. While some medical tapes can fail in one or more of these categories, Durapore Advanced Tape adheres in all of them.
“When patient outcomes rely upon effective securement, choosing the right medical tape is crucial,” shared Mel Wong, Global Business Team Leader, 3M Medical Solutions Division. “We understand there’s absolutely zero margin for error in safely securing patient tubes and devices. That’s why we are committed to continuously challenging adhesive capability boundaries. We want every clinician to have complete confidence that their critical applications will stay in place, so they can focus entirely on providing patient care.”
