Why CLR Enables Standardized Thoracic Irrigation
Early thoracic irrigation reduces retained hemothorax, shortens hospital and ICU stays, and lowers cost. The evidence for that is well established. What has kept irrigation from becoming routine practice is not the clinical case. It is the workflow: irrigation has historically been slow to set up, messy to perform, and difficult to control with precision.
Source: Lyons 2025
CLR Medical’s device platform – including the CLR Irrigator, CLR Port, and CLR Port Injector – removes each of those three barriers.
Barrier One: Mess
Ad hoc irrigation setups typically rely on ill-fitting, general-purpose disposables found in the clinical area: the plunger removed off a syringe to serve as a funnel, a Yankauer suction catheter shoved into a chest tube. Seals are imperfect, leading to concerns regarding the introduction of infection and exposing healthcare providers to body fluids. Gaps in the circuit translate to loss of suction and reduced effectiveness in removal of pleural contents.
Each irrigation requires the team to disconnect the chest drainage system.
CLR seals directly to any chest tube or pleural catheter that connects to a standard chest drainage system. That seal allows effective and cleanly fluid instillation and suction of blood or even thick, infected pleural fluid. The CLR Port serves as a ready access point for repeat irrigation or syringe access without disconnecting the circuit or piercing the tubing to inject.
All CLR devices ship sterile.
Barrier Two: Efficiency
CLR is built for easy setup and rapid toggling between irrigation and suction, which streamlines the overall procedure and allows for the creation of gentle agitation in the pleural space to help facilitate evacuation.
That same workflow supports standardization and consistency across providers and shifts. A procedure that takes a predictable amount of time, avoids spills and surprises, and follows the same steps regardless of who is performing it lends itself to team member buy-in and regular use. Nursing prepares the CLR devices, makes the connections to suction and a saline bag, and communicates and documents I’s and O’s as they go.
In a trauma bay, ICU, or procedure suite, where efficeiency and simplicity directly affect outcomes, that consistency is the difference between irrigation happening reliably and irrigation happening only when conditions allow.
Thoracic Irrigation as a Preventative Approach
Over the last 10 years, early thoracic irrigation has been shown to result in more effective and complete hemothorax evacuation. The reduction in retained hemothorax has
Different clinical scenarios call for different irrigation approaches, and CLR’s color-coded suction and irrigation controls let providers adjust irrigation volume and timing in real-time, in response to feedback obtained during the procedure. Inflow slowed? Patient experiencing discomfort? Consider switching to suction and choosing smaller aliquot volumes.
One-handed toggling between irrigation and suction frees the provider’s dominant hand to manipulate and sweep the chest tube during irrigation, improving reach within the pleural cavity and access to areas a fixed setup might miss.
One independent, published account of the device described its clinical function directly:
“Specialized devices, such as the CLR Irrigator… can allow for more ergonomic lavage as well as the ability to rapidly cycle between irrigation and suction… [and] may agitate and more effectively dilute the traumatic HTX, theoretically inhibiting coagulation. Cycling irrigation may also help to clear mild obstructions formed during suction…”
Thoracic Irrigation as a Preventative Approach
Some patients need more than a single irrigation session. The CLR Port supports repeat irrigation without disconnecting the drainage system. And when syringe access is needed, the CLR Port and CLR Port Injector accommodate standard Luer syringes with no circuit disconnection and no injecting directly into tubing. Needleless access via the CLR Port has the added benefit of cutting off flow to the chest drainage system, automating an important step in the procedure.
Built for Where Care Actually Happens
CLR-enabled irrigation is not limited to trauma. The same closed-system design supports pleural collection management in the ER, ICU, OR, procedure suite, or general ward, for patients with hemothorax, empyema, or post-operative pleural collections that require drainage and irrigation.
Solving for mess, time, and precision is what turns thoracic irrigation from an occasional, provider-dependent intervention into a standardized, repeatable part of hemothorax / pleural collection management. That standardization is what underlies the overwhelmingly positive outcomes reported in the literature.
The remaining question for most programs is not whether the device works. It is how to get a new device and protocol adopted consistently across a trauma service. That is the focus of the next post in this series.
Learn more about the CLR Irrigator, CLR Port, and CLR Port Injector: clrmedical.com