ARE AIR INLETS NECESSARY WITH HAEMACCEL

Haemaccel is often used for the resuscitation of shocked patients. It is common practice to introduce an air inlet into the plastic containe r to increase the flow rate. We investigated how much difference an ai r inlet made. We compared the flow rates with no air inlet, a single a ir inlet, a 2 x 2 cm hole (equivalent to multiple air inlets) and a pr essure infusion cuff. Although the use of an air inlet compared with n o air inlet reduced the time to infuse 500 ml by 27 s, the difference was only clinically significant over the final 100 ml. A pressure cuff produced the fastest flow, reducing the time by 68 s. Use of an air i nlet, however, precludes subsequent use of a pressure cuff. We recomme nd that the practice of using air inlets for Haemaccel and other simil arly packaged products is abandoned.