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About The Importance of
Keeping Premixed IV Bags Covered in their Plastic Overwraps.
The Institute for Safe Medication Practice (ISMP)
describes how the protective overwraps serves an important purpose - to
control the amount of water vapour that escapes from an IV solution.
Once IV bags are removed from their overwraps and exposed to room air, the
rate of evaporation increases. And over time, the drug's concentration
will increase because the amount of drug in the bag stays the same while
amount of fluid decreases.
You can actually lose a large proportion of the liquid in an IV bag this
way. ISMP cites a case where half the liquid in the bag was lost. IN this
case, a patient was supposed to receive 40 mEq of potassium chloride in
100 mL over an hour, but the bag was empty in half an hour. That's because
the overwrap had been removed from the bag and over time, half of the
water had evaporated, leaving 40 mEq of potassium in just 50 mL of
solution.
One solution may be to send them to the pharmacy, so they can be sent to a
unit where a patient is currently receiving the solution and they can be
used right away. ISMP also cautions against writing an expiration date
directly on the bag, because volatile chemicals from the ink may leach
into the solution.
(
http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/
cdrh/cfdocs/psn/transcript.cfm?show=22#6
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