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Pump failure

caretaker

caretaker

Well-Known Member
Messages
276
Location
essex
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Pump
If your pump fails or your not getting any insulin for any reason how long before dangerous ketones kick in.how quickly
 
Not sure of the answer, but if your pump fails and you have high bg levels then you should use your insulin pen, have you got it back up and running?
 
caretaker said:
If your pump fails or your not getting any insulin for any reason how long before dangerous ketones kick in.how quickly
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If your pump fails you will be notified by the pump. So you should never unless very careless get ketones from a pump failure. Which is very rare.
As to insulin not being delivered due to a blockage ie bent tubing then the pump will alarm. Bottom line is though as long as you check your blood sugars every 2 hours then there is no reason what so ever to end up with ketones or DKA. Obviously during the night testing every two hours is not practical.
Insulin duration varies from 4 -6 hours, so I would expect a problem to show up with the peak activity time about 2 hours.
 
noblehead said:
Not sure of the answer, but if your pump fails and you have high bg levels then you should use your insulin pen, have you got it back up and running?
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My pumps ok's thanks. . i was asking more out of curiosity. its just one of them things until it happens you just know .I'm thinking about if it happens during the night when your asleep.
 
caretaker said:
My pumps ok's thanks. . i was asking more out of curiosity. its just one of them things until it happens you just know .I'm thinking about if it happens during the night when your asleep.
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I'm really not sure of the time scale tbh, but I would expect your pump would alarm if you had a failure...............hopefully.
 
My pump didn't alarm me when my cannula hadn't gone in properly, so I make sure I test even more when I first put in a new cannula
 
I cant stress enough lol thst you do have to be vigilant with pumps. We are all human beings who will make mistakes.

I once when first dtsrted pumping, had a shower and got half dressed, put pump in bra and then the phone rang so was on the phone for about 45mins. OH made me a drink and I went to bed as it was late eve. Had a lovely sleep, didnt get up in the night to bg test as I was worn out, got up in the morning, did bg test, was sky high.......reason was the tube wasnt attached to the set. I didnt have DKA but that was down to me being lucky in the fact that I dont need much insulin overnight. If I had needed more......it might have meant being admitted to hospital. So, you do have to keep yr wits about you and make sure that the tube clip is attached to the set as its sooo easy to get side tracked.
 
Great post @iHs and so very true :)

Confession time, the other day I was changing my basal rates on my PDM, if the basal rate is currently running (Omnipod Pump) you have to suspend the insulin delivery to do an edit, so I did so and forgot to resume the basal delivery, the alarm was going off on my Pod but as it was due to be changed I just thought it was alerting me to change it, an hour later I went to my PDM and the warning message was on the screen that the insulin had been suspended and did I want to resume the basal delivery, so lesson learnt is to double check everything and not become complacent :rolleyes:
 
iHs said:
I cant stress enough lol thst you do have to be vigilant with pumps. We are all human beings who will make mistakes.

I once when first dtsrted pumping, had a shower and got half dressed, put pump in bra and then the phone rang so was on the phone for about 45mins. OH made me a drink and I went to bed as it was late eve. Had a lovely sleep, didnt get up in the night to bg test as I was worn out, got up in the morning, did bg test, was sky high.......reason was the tube wasnt attached to the set. I didnt have DKA but that was down to me being lucky in the fact that I dont need much insulin overnight. If I had needed more......it might have meant being admitted to hospital. So, you do have to keep yr wits about you and make sure that the tube clip is attached to the set as its sooo easy to get side tracked.
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How high do you think you went before you noticed. if i get to high BG 14+ i get joint pain and i no something wrong. i tend to always use the bolus wizard so i can see the pump stats at least every 4 hours minimum except when i go to bad and if i get 7 hours sleep i'm lucky
 
caretaker said:
How high do you think you went before you noticed. if i get to high BG 14+ i get joint pain and i no something wrong. i tend to always use the bolus wizard so i can see the pump stats at least every 4 hours minimum except when i go to basymptoms if i get 7 hours sleep i'm lucky
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I didnt know that my bg was as high as it was until I got up in the morning and tested. It was 17mmol but I felt more worried and angry than anything else. When i was younger and in my 20s, i would feel very thirsty if my bg went to 12mmol so that was my warning. I think awareness
symtoms of high bg change as we get older and when changing to new insulins. My awareness of low bg is still reasonably good but over the yearsthose have changed a bit as well.
 
iHs said:
I didnt know that my bg was as high as it was until I got up in the morning and tested. It was 17mmol but I felt more worried and angry than anything else. When i was younger and in my 20s, i would feel very thirsty if my bg went to 12mmol so that was my warning. I think awareness
symtoms of high bg change as we get older and when changing to new insulins. My awareness of low bg is still reasonably good but over the yearsthose have changed a bit as well.
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I agree warning signs charge I've been type 1 for 43 years and i have lost a lot of hypo awareness i quite often go down to 2.9 and not notice but i do know my danger times of the day and test.
 
caretaker said:
I agree warning signs charge I've been type 1 for 43 years and i have lost a lot of hypo awareness i quite often go down to 2.9 and not notice but i do know my danger times of the day and test.
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For me its not fsr from 50yrs now so I know how you feel. Youll find pumping very life changing but youll get used to dealing with the wsrts and corns at times. Just remember to not turn yr back to bg testing as yr meter or cgm will end up being yr best friend to keep you ok
 
caretaker said:
If your pump fails or your not getting any insulin for any reason how long before dangerous ketones kick in.how quickly
Click to expand...
It's extremely fast compared to missing a basal shot, which is why as @iHs you need to be hypervigilant. If you miss a basal shot (forget, it goes wrong, etc) you will have a diminishing amount of basal active for many hours. When a pump stops it stops dead and you are immediately moving toward DKA. And if you are eating carbs and the bolus is failing, this process is accelerated massively. It's possible to go from pump failure to DKA in a very short period of time, less than a day. And I don't agree with @CarbsRok that this is a rare occurrence and that the pump will warn you. My pump system has failed many times and I have never had a warning or alarm from the pump. Because the pump itself is reliable and the failures all occurred in the infusion sets ("running down your leg" as you rightly put it). The pump can only detect the most dramatic of infusion set failures. Otherwise it can pump insulin into your shoes for weeks and not notice.

So yes: vigilance, more vigilance, and immediate action. Know your DKA procedures by heart. Always have alternative means of insulin delivery available.

12 months on the pump have taught me that the only way to be safe is to distrust my pump. If anything unusual happens at all, I assume the worst, that some part of the system has failed.
 
@Spiker does the Vibe not alarm when the cannula is kinked? My previous vibe and 2020 both did this. I am now on my second vibe and hope it's as reliable! Mind you I always eat a meal after changing a set to really test it. Have you set the alarm to high?
 
MushyPeaBrain said:
@Spiker does the Vibe not alarm when the cannula is kinked? My previous vibe and 2020 both did this. I am now on my second vibe and hope it's as reliable! Mind you I always eat a meal after changing a set to really test it. Have you set the alarm to high?
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I have always had the alarm sensitivity set to high and I have had an occlusion alarm maybe 2 or 3 times, and once was when I was deliberately squeezing down on the cannula. To be honest I think the pump unit itself is highly reliable and its alarms are reliable. It's just let down by the infusion sets. There is no way for the pump to detect if the infusion set is pumping into air. It would need a very sensitive feedback sensor for that. And in fact there is already a pretty sensitive feedback sensor to detect cartridge jams. But it would need to be a hundred times more sensitive to detect the difference between pumping into flesh and pumping into air.
 
iHs said:
For me its not fsr from 50yrs now so I know how you feel. Youll find pumping very life changing but youll get used to dealing with the wsrts and corns at times. Just remember to not turn yr back to bg testing as yr meter or cgm will end up being yr best friend to keep you ok
Click to expand...
Agreed, regular frequent blood testing is the only reliable way to monitor that your pump is working normally.
 
Spiker said:
And I don't agree with @CarbsRok that this is a rare occurrence and that the pump will warn you. My pump system has failed many times and I have never had a warning or alarm from the pump. Because the pump itself is reliable and the failures all occurred in the infusion sets
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That's not a pump failure though is it? The pump alarms at delivery failure by the pump not if it's delivering insulin through the tube or cannula at the set amount. It's hardly the pumps faults if you have not inserted said cannula correctly is it.?
 
CarbsRok said:
That's not a pump failure though is it? The pump alarms at delivery failure by the pump not if it's delivering insulin through the tube or cannula at the set amount. It's hardly the pumps faults if you have not inserted said cannula correctly is it.?
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The pump is part of a complete system, a continuous subcutaneous insulin delivery system. If any part of if fails, the system has failed. Insulin delivery has stopped, and the user is in medical danger.

It could be seen as offensive to imply that cannula failures are down to user insertion errors.

In my view a safe system for consumer use needs to detect a life threatening condition even if it was caused by a user error, which sometimes it is.

[Edited by author]
 
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I have deleted the post above as you have started another thread with it..
 
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