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There’s A Much Safer IV Liquid Than Saline, Suggests New Study

posted by janrinok on Wednesday February 28 2018, @09:04PM   
from the you're-a-drip dept.

Fnord666 writes:

Would it be wise for many hospitals to replace saline with balanced fluids for hospitalized patients? It appears so. Doing such a move might significantly reduce mortality and morbidity, according to Vanderbilt University Medical Center's Matthew W. Semler during a presentation at the annual meeting of the Society of Critical Care Medicine.

The study involved 28,000 patients at Vanderbilt University who were given either saline-based IV bags or balanced fluid variants. They found that for every 100 patients on balanced fluids, there was one fewer death or critical kidney damage. Yes, 1 percent doesn't seem a dramatic reduction — but when viewed at a grander scale, that could mean up to 70,000 fewer deaths and 100,000 fewer incidents of kidney problems annually in the United States.

Source: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/222043/20180228/a-new-study-suggests-there-s-a-much-safer-iv-liquid-than-saline.htm

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Original Submission

• Bad Writing Bad Writing (Score: 3, Informative) by Bill Dimm on Wednesday February 28 2018, @09:31PM (3 children)

  by Bill Dimm (940) on Wednesday February 28 2018, @09:31PM (#645409)

  From the original article:

  It turns out patients who received an IV bag with balanced fluids showed a roughly 1 percent decrease in the incidence of death and critical kidney damage

  Then later:

  They found that for every 100 patients on balanced fluids, there was one fewer death or critical kidney damage. Yes, 1 percent doesn't seem a dramatic reduction...

  In the first quote, when he says a "1 percent decrease" does he mean that in an absolute sense (e.g., 3% drops to 2%) or does he mean it in a relative sense (e.g., 3.00% drops to 2.97%)? The second quote seems to imply that he means it in an absolute sense, but then the "1 percent doesn't seem a dramatic reduction" isn't warranted without providing context. Is it dropping from 2% to 1% (very significant) or from 90% to 89%? Yet another journalist that can't write clearly (or doesn't understand the topic about which he is writing).

  Starting Score:	1		point
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  Informative=1, Total=1
  Extra 'Informative' Modifier		0
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• Good luck getting them to use dB Good luck getting them to use dB (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @10:02PM (1 child)

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @10:02PM (#645428)

  The proper way is with decibels. Well, you could use bels or centibels or millibels.

  dB B cB mB

  or even microbels

  Parent

  • Re:Good luck getting them to use dB (Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Wednesday February 28 2018, @11:27PM

    by insanumingenium (4824) on Wednesday February 28 2018, @11:27PM (#645488) Journal

    Even in practices that have adopted logarithmic measurements, things get annoying fast. dBi, dBd, dBm, dBW, dBV, dBv/dBu, dB SPL, dB SIL, ad nauseam are all theoretically they are all dB. Then you can get down to the business of conflating power quantities and root-power quantities and have to explain that all these dBs are not necessarily cross compatible.

    Parent

• Re:Bad Writing (Score: 3, Funny) by The Archon V2.0 on Wednesday February 28 2018, @10:15PM

  by The Archon V2.0 (3887) on Wednesday February 28 2018, @10:15PM (#645440)

  And this right here is why the financial sector invented basis points, an always-absolute permyriad.

  Parent