If air enters the blood vessels during infusion, is there any hope?

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If air enters the blood vessels during infusion, is there any hope?

First, let’s answer a question. When an IV drip is finished, will air be injected into the blood vessels?

Professional data shows that the standard atmospheric pressure is about 760mmHg (millimeters of mercury), and the standard blood pressure is about 100mmHg. Do you feel like you are taking a deep breath? But in fact... 100mmHg means that the standard blood pressure is 100mmHg higher than the atmospheric pressure. So even if the bottle is empty, the air cannot enter the blood vessels. You only need to worry about "automatic blood donation" caused by blood return...

So, will air be introduced into the infusion?

Before infusion, nurses will normally flick the needle first. This flicking action is to empty the air in the needle hole.

During infusion, in order to prevent air from entering the blood transfusion line, the infusion set is equipped with a magical Murphy's tube, which is used to retain a certain amount of liquid to form a liquid level and prevent air from entering the line.

So generally speaking, unless someone squeezes the infusion bottle manually, hanging the IV will not inject air into the body.

For normal people, a small amount of air entering the blood vessels will not cause discomfort. Only when a large amount of air is injected into the blood vessels can air embolism occur. If the injected dose is too large, it can also cause sudden death.

However, we cannot discuss the consequences without considering the dosage. The dosage that causes air embolism here is at least 50ml of air. Among the common medical syringes, the largest one is the 50ml syringe used for intravenous injection.

Therefore, air embolism caused by injection is relatively rare. For normal people, under normal circumstances, we don't have to worry about air being infused or injected.

Author: Tang Qin

Source: WeChat official account of China Science and Technology Press