Saline shortage

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DYK343

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Anyone having elective surgery cancelled yet? I heard we might soon. We have 2 weeks saline left.

Solutions overheard
1) pharmacy will start making it
2) Import it
3) "There is plenty of saline the roads are just closed and cant get to it, it will be over soon once they figure out how to get to it" (source OR charge nurse)


The factory outside Ashville "should be up and running again by the new year" (source random news article). Thats a long time, especially during elective surgery season.
 
Heard Minnesota already is starting to cancel elective cases.

If cases are not major you could use sterile water. Or you could turn to irrisept.

Ultimately cases will be cancelled by the suit who runs your hospital even if there are alternatives.
 
We had a week about a week ago. I used vashe to do an I& D.
 
One of the hospital systems in my town recently sent out an email saying they receive nearly 100% of their IV supplies from the facility in NC that is down. The email didn't say anything about cancelling surgery, but they are desperate for people to stop unnecessary use ie. non-critical patients, anyone who can use oral hydration instead of IV, etc.
 
This doesn't really make sense.
Saline is basically the easiest thing ever to make.

Stuff like Wegovy or even lidocaine shortage I understand... reasonably hard to make/compound. But saline??? Those supplies are sitting in any house or cafeteria in the world. I have seen backorders on the 3cc IV flush or vials or certain forms of saline before, but bottles and IV bags of 500ml, 1L, 3L, etc saline? No way. There's a reason 1000ml saline bags are $5 or less typically.

...and if saline couldn't be made (it can), I'd imagine any hospital with a brain would almost do ER divert or close portions of inpatient beds before they'd be cancelling elective surgery. That just seems like a terrible (and totally avoidable) way to cripple their revenue and cause widespread staff and budget issues.
 
Feli said:
This doesn't really make sense.
Saline is basically the easiest thing ever to make.

Stuff like Wegovy or even lidocaine shortage I understand... reasonably hard to make/compound. But saline??? Those supplies are sitting in any house or cafeteria in the world. I have seen backorders on the 3cc IV flush or vials or certain forms of saline before, but bottles and IV bags of 500ml, 1L, 3L, etc saline? No way. There's a reason 1000ml saline bags are $5 or less typically.

...and if saline couldn't be made (it can), I'd imagine any hospital with a brain would almost do ER divert or close portions of inpatient beds before they'd be cancelling elective surgery. That just seems like a terrible (and totally avoidable) way to cripple their revenue and cause widespread staff and budget issues.
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I’m sure it’s a contract issue and money based moreso than actually wanting to have saline for patients. Hospitals can find saline - but they’ve already agreed to get saline from X place on some sort of deal.

As far as the elective stuff goes..a hospital is still a hospital. Grandma can wait a couple weeks for her bunion if it means ICU and emergency patients can get fluids.

The nice thing about elective surgery is it can be delayed and the hospital will still make the money just at another time.
 
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Ive heard pharmacy might start making it. But do they have the sterile 0.5/1L/3L bags. Do they have the right equipment on hand? I assume it needs to be made in a sterile hood given its IV administered. Thats a lot of saline to make a day for small and large hospitals.
 
DYK343 said:
Ive heard pharmacy might start making it. But do they have the sterile 0.5/1L/3L bags. Do they have the right equipment on hand? I assume it needs to be made in a sterile hood given its IV administered. Thats a lot of saline to make a day for small and large hospitals.
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I’m only a layman here as far as chemistry goes. Took the MCAT prereqs and whatnot.

But isn’t saline like the absolute easiest s*** to make?
 
Hybrocure said:
I’m only a layman here as far as chemistry goes. Took the MCAT prereqs and whatnot.

But isn’t saline like the absolute easiest s*** to make?
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yeah but for a 200 bed hospital it might not be as easy as it sounds.
Sterility of it on a large scale would be my question on how they would make it work.
These hospitals compound and mix medications all day and should have the means to sterile make it. Its just the required volume. We burn through a lot of saline.

BUt if it comes to shutting down elective surgery and $$$ I could see them making it work.
 
I got laughed at by OR for suggesting they re-use the same 1L bottle of saline for my 3 elective cases this morning.

Darn you DYK 😝
 
air bud said:
We had a week about a week ago. I used vashe to do an I& D.
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I'm doing an I&D with vashe soon. I wasn't going to be able to get it scheduled without reading it here. Thanks for the idea
 
Anyone try irrigating passively with copious amounts of blood?
 
I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.
 
Flip-flop-flerpity said:
I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.
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Had a stroke reading this.

What are you referring to? Genuinely curious.
 
shadesofgrey said:
A certain former president pondering covid treatment options aloud. Without getting to political, his speech patterns/phrasing are truly something...
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This happened right before he recommended we start injecting bleach
 
Podstar said:
Rural hospital.
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Seriously? Wow.
They even froze ones already scheduled?

If you are FTE of the hospital, think how steady/rickety a financial base you are on if they can't even handle this issue without losing many millions cancelling elective at year end... due to saline. This is the busiest time of year for elective. Saline. (if you just bring cases there as well as other places, no big deal)

rick and morty get schwifty GIF
 
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