was in ER lots of times due to variou stuff (gallstones, excessive gas, GERD) and got an IV everytime
mom always got anxious when IV was about to end
2-3 times I was alone in ER and nurses were busy (car crash victims etc were brought in) so IVs got empty with plenty of air bubbles
only thing happened to me was in 1 of those my blood got up to the IV after 10 minutes or so but nothing else happened
why air bubbles in IVs are not an emergency or looked after instantly? When called on a empty IV (not dripping anymore) nurses act cool and cut the drip valve as if everything is normal
In: 73
The thing that can kill you is a fairly large amount of air *injected* into you **all at once**. The reason why providers are so careful to get all the air out of a needle isn’t that a tiny amount of air will kill you – it’s that pressing until liquid appears ensures there’s *no* air, vs guessing “hey, maybe this small amount of air that’s probably left won’t kill them.”
With an IV, though, the fluid is being drawn in, not injected, and the air bubbles you see tend not to actually get into your blood – they tend to act as momentary stoppers to the flow and not as part of a continuous line of stuff going into your blood. And, if air *does* get in, it’s going in a very little bit at a time, and it’ll dissolve in and then be expelled.
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