Question

How could you determine the best concentration of solutes to give to a patient in need of IV fluids before you introduce the fluids into the patient's body?

Answer 1

any ideas?

Answer 2

We are currently working with water potential and such. I know you could extract a blood sample and expose it to various other solutions of known solute concentration and see if the two are isotonic, but I feel like that would take a lot of trial and error and the blood sample would cool, thus affecting solute potential... any other suggestions?

Answer 3

ok, this is a real world situation or is this a test of some sort?

Answer 4

test/ written problem assigned *

Answer 5

It is for a set of post lab questions, so no it is not a test. I do not go to school online so all my tests are in-class.

Answer 6

understood, so ill assume you were present during this lab??

Answer 7

Indeed I was. We were determining the water potential of sweet potato pieces by placing them in solutions of sucrose with varying molarity. For proof, the sweet potato pieces ended up having nearly a .8 molar concentration of sucrose. Only .01g of water left the sweet potato piece.

Answer 8

At least for our group. Another group that tested sweet potato pieces found that they were closer to a 1.0 molarity.

Answer 9

1.0 grams left the Potato in that group??

Answer 10

Pardon? I suppose I don't understand your question...

Answer 11

the group that you were referring to before, they had 1.0 grams of water leave the Potato, while you had only .01 grams leave??

Answer 12

Oh i see... no. The sweet potato in that group was isotonic with a 1.0 molar concentration sucrose. In other words, no water left or came into the potato in a 1.0m environment. Our group's potato, however, was isotonic with a .8m solution.

Answer 13

Excuse me, nearly isotonic. It wouldn't be completely isotonic as .01g of water did leave.

Answer 14

ok, i see. So how does your question relate to the lab??

Answer 15

It is just in a series of post questions. It does not relate to the potatoes directly, but does deal with calculating water potential through solute concentration, in this case so you don't introduce a hypotonic solution and trigger a fireworks display of bursting red blood cells within a patient.

Answer 16

lol i get you, so what other ideas do you have other than a trial and error??

Answer 17

You could simply test a blood sample for it's molarity of various substances, but that's assuming you have a piece of equipment that will give you a molarity reading. There are no such pieces of equipment that I know of, however.

Answer 18

If you knew the molarity you could easily calculate solute potential (-iCRT) and introduce an isotonic mixture of IV fluids.

Answer 19

ok, so let me rephrase. do you have any applicable ideas?? lol

Answer 20

Beside trial and error, no. I could write that down and it would likely be perfectly acceptable, but there has to be another, less tedious way to figure it out. Otherwise a lot of people would die.

Answer 21

well, theoretically you can just extract a large sample of blood and fill up different tubes with different solutes to see which one works best with the sample

Answer 22

Yes, that's what I've been saying. Figure out which molarity is isotonic to the blood sample. In all likelihood that's the answer the teacher is looking for. However, that is in no way a practical method of finding solute concentration in a patient. I guess you could use it, but if someone was extremely dehydrated it wouldn't be fast enough. Also, if you were just to give water to a severely dehydrated patient, it is likely that water will rush in and burst their blood cells. Is there something I am missing here?

Answer 23

well, you can never add pure water to someones blood stream for that same reason lol; the saline solution is used instead of pure water. Also couldnt you just simply give that patent a glass of water if they were severely dehydrated?? :P lol

Answer 24

I feel like we're going in circles here... but no, you could not give the patient a glass of water. The large difference between the solute concentration in the patient's body (very high) and the water (nearly 0) would cause the water to rush in to the body's cells through osmosis. The cells would either swell immensely or even burst, a condition called hyponatremia. This can lead to fainting and sometimes death, and is the reason why, after a particularly long and arduous workout, you should drink a sports drink instead of water. The sports drink will contain salt and electrolytes so that the solute concentration isn't so off kilter and your cells don't explode ;)

Answer 25

yes, i know. But im just saying, there might not even be another way to deliver an IV if we know this little about the patient, in my opinion; you would have to know somewhat of where the patient is at in terms of dehydration. remember that just because something is a little bit hyper-tonic, and a little bit hypo-tonic; doesn't mean it HAS to explode.

Answer 26

No, it doesn't have to if it is a little bit hypertonic. However, if you have a patient come in looking pale-faced and sluggish, I wouldn't recommend giving him just water. But I digress. What we are trying to do is figure out the water potential of the patient's cells so that we can administer a proper IV. I simply wrote down to draw a blood sample and expose it to environments of different solute concentrations until you find one that is isotonic. Any other, more effective method is beyond my knowledge. Thanks for the help, though!

Answer 27

yea :/

Answer 28

@Mantis_Shrimp do you still need help?

Answer 29

Not really, no. I'll close the question. Thanks though!

Answer 30

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btw :3

Answer 31

Why thank you kind sir.