Intravenous Fluid Regulation Carries Potential Complications
Complications associated with intravenous fluid regulation and inappropriate fluid therapy protocol can easily put patients at risk of morbidity and mortality. Setting the flow rate accurately is vital to ensuring patient safety and is particularly important with anesthesia and in ICUs.
As we state on our website, “A medication error is defined as any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of the health care professional, patient or consumer. According to a review published in Drug Safety Magazine in 2007, medication errors occurred in a mean of 5.7% of all episodes of drug administration.”
How Complications Arise
According to the website Healthline, there are a few risks associated with receiving intravenous theraly fluids. These include infection at the needle site, a dislodged needle or a collapsed vein. The complications related to the regulation of administered fluids can be more serious.
Overload can cause symptoms such as a headache, high blood pressure, anxiety and trouble breathing. Some degree of overload can be tolerated by healthy patients, but in those with other health problems, it is dangerous. Fluid overload has no precise definition, but complications usually arise in the context of pre-existing cardiorespiratory disease and severe acute illness.
On the other hand, the symptoms of a low flow rate may vary, depending on the patient and the reason for having fluids administered. Mostly, a patient not getting enough fluids will simply not respond to treatment in the way that is expected. Insufficient fluid administration is readily identified by signs and symptoms of inadequate circulation and decreased organ perfusion.
Elcam’s Marvelous™ stopcock, with its luer-activated valve designed to ensure patient safety relative to medication errors, can help minimize the opportunities for fluid overload mainly by reducing the number of stopcock manipulations. The Marvelous features a unique circumferential channel that reaches the entire internal volume of the valve. By eliminating the need of post-medication flushing with a syringe, the Marvelous contributes to decreasing the chances of medication errors.
If you’d like to learn more about how our Marvelous stopcock can reduce the complications associated with intravenous fluid regulation, we’d like to offer you a white paper, Elcam Medical’s New & Innovative Minimal Residual Volume Luer-Activated Stopcock.
Access yours today, and we’ll see you next time In the ICU.
