IV Fluids to Trauma Victims

The newsarticle begins with the big headline, but as the reader reads on,
the statement "giving IV fluids to trauma victims found harmful" carries
less and less weight as the writer qualifies his headline.  Firstly, we
discover that delaying IV treatment is useful only for "bleeding adult
patients with penetrating wounds to the chest and abdomen," and other types
of injuries were not included, such as head wounds and victims who were
children or adolescents.  Furthermore, another reseacher says that even
though the data suggests that delaying IV treatment is best, the "door is
still open for modifying this recommendation."

The journal article states that the percentage of victims who survived with
IV fluids was 62%, without fluids, 70%.  Furthermore, those who received
immediate fluids averaged longer ICU and hospital stays suggesting that the
immediate IV fluids interferes with various immune responses, as the
newsarticle explains.

There were a few interesting points that I caught my attention.  The first
was table 1, where they state the "probability of survival" of both groups;
those who receive immediate resuscitation were 3% less likely to survive.
If this is not accounted for in the final calculation of survivors, then
perhaps their findings would not be statisticaly significant.

Overall, the researchers made a good effort to question a long-standing
practice of administering IV fluids to trauma victims.  There data suggests
that in some cases, doing so does more harm than it alleviates.  Because of
its widespread practice, more in-depth research needs to be done to
evaluate delayed IV's with head traumas and injuries to children, which
were not included in this study.