Does Any One Squeeze the Air Out of their I.V. Bag???

[medicRob]

In all fairness, if the patient needs more than 1 Liter of fluid, I am gonna put it on a pump anyways.

 

[mikie]

pressure

(In my experience): They do it on every bag that gets pressure (manual or automatic) infusers, cause as people already mentioned, there is residual air and when manually pressure infusing, that air will get infused in once the liquid is gone (after all, air if a fluid too).

I can't really see this happening if using a proper pressure bag (not a BP cuff) even if you don't "spike the air out."

 

[jwk]

What about the drip chamber? Do you leave it 3/4 full or fully full?



If an IV Bag is not attended to when it runs out does air have the potential to enter the line and into the vein? Is this "Burping the Line" a good Prevention technique for handing a patient off to a nursing staff that is known to be lazy/distracted???

If the drip chamber is full, then it's not a drip chamber.

 

[DwayneEMTP]

The only real reason to do this is in busy ERs, where the patient may not have close nursing care. If you get the air out and you come back 4 hours later and the liter finished 45 minutes ago, there is no air in the line. You could do something similar by spiking the bag and holding it upside down, squeezing the air out and then turning it rightside up and flushing the line. No air in the bag, no problem with contamination.

Agreed. Overseas it was not uncommon to have a patient on fluids in another room, out of sight, while treating other patients and lose track of the exact time to change a bag.

I would spike it, turn it upside down, push the air into the line, flip it back over, purge the line like normal and be done. I can't imagine ever pulling the spike to do so. And I have no idea if it was even necessary, as I doubt the little bit of air that the line can hold would have been detrimental to the patient, but it made me feel better to know it was fluid only that I was delivering...

Dwayne