Medication errors are among the leading causes of serious adverse events in hospitalized patients, and a considerable number of deaths each year can be traced back to them. In syringe and infusion pumps, delivery accuracy is a safety-critical property, especially in intensive care and neonatal environments. Importantly, the accuracy of these devices is not dictated by the motor and drive mechanism alone. A group of external factors, namely the size and mechanical compliance of the mounted syringe, the length and internal diameter of the infusion line, and the material behavior of the tubing, exert a strong and frequently underestimated influence on performance.
This study sets out an integrated experimental and statistical investigation of the variables that shape syringe pump performance. Within a full factorial design, several analytical techniques were applied. The data set comprised more than 300 observations spanning three syringe sizes, three programmed flow rates, several tubing types, and two infusion line lengths.
They confirm that syringe size, tubing compliance, and line length are each statistically significant determinants of pump performance, with the largest effects appearing at the lowest flow rate (1.0 mL/h). Taken together, the findings show that larger syringe diameters magnify the effect of mechanical play in the drive train; that long infusion lines add both fluidic resistance and volumetric compliance, the latter being the dominant cause of delayed flow onset at low rates; and that compliant tubing stores elastic strain energy during start-up, producing a delayed onset of flow together with transient under-delivery.