"For such a ubiquitous treatment, you'd probably expect that saline has been thoroughly studied and refined. As it turns out, that was never really the case at all. Now there's a rethinking about whether saline is really the best way to go.
Intravenous fluids were invented in England in the first decades of the 19th century to treat cholera, which even then was recognized as a disease that killed by dehydration. Early physicians knew that human blood was salty, and a Scottish doctor named Latta developed a primitive salt water solution to replace through the veins what had been lost through the bowels. The effect was "remarkable," according to The Lancet in 1832.
By the 1880s, scientists knew more about the basic chemical elements in human blood. A physiologist named Sidney Ringer created a solution containing sodium, potassium, and chloride in concentrations similar to blood. It's still in use today. We call it lactated Ringer's solution.
Ringer's solution was slow to catch on, though, and a simpler salt solution known as normal saline became the de facto IV fluid of the early 20th century. A descendent of Latta's original fluid, normal saline contains only two ingredients — water and salt...
He took another tack to illustrate the importance of the study's findings. "There are 5 million patients admitted to an ICU in the United States every year," he said. "For every 100 patients treated with balanced fluids instead of saline, 1 less patient would experience death, new dialysis, or persistent renal problems.""
FB: "Amazingly, the ascendance of normal saline as the default IV fluid seems to have been based solely on Hamburger's early experiments. "It remains a mystery how it came into general use as an intravenous fluid," a group of British physicians wrote in 2008, noting the absence of any other experimental data to support it. "Perhaps it was due to the ease, convenience, and low cost of mixing common salt with water.""
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