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IV Bags May Not Be Necessary to Rehydrate Patients

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Re: IV Bags May Not Be Necessary to Rehydrate Patients

#111

Post by arca_vorago »

33W wrote: post #95
jtuente wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some quick googling estimates 6 tsp of sugar is about 25 grams or 100 calories. For comparison, a 32oz bottle of Gatorade G2 (low calorie) has about 19 grams of sugar, and a 32oz bottle of normal Gatorade has about 56 grams. Adding - 1/2 tsp of salt is 2.5 grams of which it is 1 gram of sodium. G2 - 435mg sodium, 120mg potassium; normal - 400mg, 100mg.

Looking at the info for pedialyte, 12 oz contains 370mg of sodium, and 9g of sugar. So for 32oz, that 986mg sodium, and 24g sugar, which seems spot on to the articles recommended ratios. https://pedialyte.com/products/classic/mixed-fruit

This entire thread is reminding me of my Marine Corps days. Super hung over? Hey doc, we need to practice our IV skills... sweet cold hangover relief. About to do an extra hard day of training? Drink a bottle of pedialite and grab the other camelback you put Gatorade in.

Hydration is no joke.

Re: IV Bags May Not Be Necessary to Rehydrate Patients

#112

Post by aidenn0 »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #107
aidenn0 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick tip: for kids, you can make popsicles out of the solution, which will moderate the rate at which they drink it.

The salt won't freeze though?

If you look at the recipe it's like 3g of salt in 1L of water; that lowers the freezing point a bit, but not much.

Re: IV Bags May Not Be Necessary to Rehydrate Patients

#113

Post by LeifCarrotson »

Slansitartop wrote: post #104
gasgasgas wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The charges are inflated because of insurance. The actual paid amount is less.

The actual paid amount was $200, which is still excessive, especially for something I didn't really need.

Well, that's the amount you paid. Some fraction of the insurance premiums which you and your employer paid also went to the hospital for that IV.

I wonder how much. Obviously not $2000, that's absurd. But maybe $200. Or $2. Or maybe the insurance company gets paid $20 by the hospital so they get to make $180 off of you for the IV.

Re: IV Bags May Not Be Necessary to Rehydrate Patients

#114

Post by jtuente »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #94
jtuente wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some quick googling estimates 6 tsp of sugar is about 25 grams or 100 calories. For comparison, a 32oz bottle of Gatorade G2 (low calorie) has about 19 grams of sugar, and a 32oz bottle of normal Gatorade has about 56 grams. Adding - 1/2 tsp of salt is 2.5 grams of which it is 1 gram of sodium. G2 - 435mg sodium, 120mg potassium; normal - 400mg, 100mg.

As a third point of reference, the Strawberry Lemonade 32oz Powerade I have here next to my keyboard (now filled with water) contains 56g sugar, 400 mg sodium, 93 mg potassium. Note that the label says it contains 21g sugar, 150mg sodium, 35 mg potassium - per 12 fluid ounces . Multiply by 2.66 if you drink the whole bottle. In table format: DIY Oral Gatorade Gatorade Powerade Pedialyte Solution G2 Sugar (g) 25 19 56…

The relevant link, unfortunately it does not list the potassium in mg - https://www.coca-colaproductfacts.com/en/products/powerade/s...

Re: IV Bags May Not Be Necessary to Rehydrate Patients

#115

Post by Slansitartop »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #113
Slansitartop wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual paid amount was $200, which is still excessive, especially for something I didn't really need.

Well, that's the amount you paid. Some fraction of the insurance premiums which you and your employer paid also went to the hospital for that IV. I wonder how much. Obviously not $2000, that's absurd. But maybe $200. Or $2. Or maybe the insurance company gets paid $20 by the hospital so they get to make $180 off of you for the IV.

I'm on an HSA. The hospital would have gotten nothing from the insurer, and I would have had to pay the whole bill, if I hadn't hit my deductible. If I'd just been to the ER and not been admitted, I would have probably had to pay for it all.

I have it on good authority that saline IV bags are dirt cheap. The hospital used a machine to control the delivery rate, but that cost should have been amortized over hundreds or thousands of patients. The nursing labor involved was negligible, not more than a half-hour for the whole stay.

Re: IV Bags May Not Be Necessary to Rehydrate Patients

#116

Post by chillydawg »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #49
chillydawg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The salt isn't there because you need salt, it's there to optimise absorption of water. This is treatment for H2O deficiency, not anything else.

Huh, interesting, anything i can read on this point? Aka citation please.

The article you are commenting on explains it in great detail.

Re: IV Bags May Not Be Necessary to Rehydrate Patients

#117

Post by moftz »

Slansitartop wrote: post #82

Hospitals also insanely overcharge for IVs. A few years ago I was in the hospital, and I knew I could keep down oral re-hydration solution. The hospital put me on a saline IV anyway. When I got the bill, the IV line item was $2000! Insurance discounts brought that down to $200. I paid all that for a couple dollars of salt water I didn't need.

Grainger sells 1L bottles of saline for $12.15. Bags are about the same price elsewhere on the internet. One thing I'm wondering is if the $200 (or $2000) also includes the labor to set it up and the consumables that go along with the IV.

Re: IV Bags May Not Be Necessary to Rehydrate Patients

#118

Post by wingspar »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #107
aidenn0 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick tip: for kids, you can make popsicles out of the solution, which will moderate the rate at which they drink it.

The salt won't freeze though?

Salt water freezes fine... Lower than 32f/0c but not too much for a regular household freezer. https://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1722

Re: IV Bags May Not Be Necessary to Rehydrate Patients

#119

Post by breatheoften »

masklinn wrote: post #71
breatheoften wrote: post #64

This is fascinating for me to read as a person who is rather convinced that trendiness tends to overwhelm reason in much of wellness practices. But I happened to try an elective iv clinic on Sunday — after a hard workout and long night the previous day — https://www.onusiv.com . I’ve never had an iv before — but the experience was genuinely awesome — muscle pain decreased, I felt lighter and energized, and my mood im…

The article isn't about IV being ineffective, rehydration IV are absolutely effective. The article is about them being un necessary unless absolutely humongous amounts of rehydration are necessary (emergency rehydration), "modern" oral rehydration is amply sufficient, cheaper, simpler, and less risky (ORS requires clean water but IV requires aseptic fluid and procedure and even then there's a risk of infection).

Thank you for this. The use of 'unnecessary' is super interesting to me and makes me empathize with the spectrum of problem's Dr.'s must have in deciding treatment plans ... I feel that arguing convincingly about the lack of necessity of a given effective technique would make for an incredibly hard communication/decision-making problem ...

Also interesting, the presence or absence of necessity was not at all a factor in my usage. I elected to pay a bunch of money for what was certainly an 'unnecessary' use of an I.V. with a goal of enhancing well-being/accelerating recovery time.

In the context of opt-in usage: not in a hospital full of sick people and disease, where provider can simply refuse to offer any service to patients if risk factors are present, with ability to pay premium market-based prices for supplies/storage since its an upscale opt-in product ... I would imagine the actual complication rate from such opt-in usages are likely to be lower than would result from unnecessary uses in a hospital environment... (Or perhaps this line of reasoning is simply me trying to rationalize this unnecessary behavior to myself -- regardless of the lack of necessity in a hospital setting, I still think I might opt-in to this treatment again from time to time ...)

Re: IV Bags May Not Be Necessary to Rehydrate Patients

#120

Post by deepakhj »

jinushaun wrote: post #6

True, but where IV bags shine is hydrating those that can’t drink water. (Vomiting, nausea, etc)

I can confirm. When I had food poisoning, I couldn’t drink any amount of water without vomiting immediately after. After 8 hours, I went to the ER and got 2 IV bags, and immediately stopped throwing up.
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