Experts discuss the impact of the IV fluid shortage

Author(s):

Brendan M. Browne, MD,Adam Lorentz, MD, FACS

Key Takeaways

The IV fluid shortage has affected urological procedures, especially those requiring irrigation, prompting adaptations in practice.
Urologists have reduced irrigation usage and considered alternative techniques like robotic simple prostatectomies to mitigate the impact.
The shortage has led to a reevaluation of resource conservation, revealing overestimated reliance on irrigation in urological care.
This situation has been a learning curve, emphasizing the potential for more efficient resource utilization in medical practice.

“Certainly, this has been a learning curve for us to adjust to something we consider just a basic part of our care delivery, an irrigation,” says Adam Lorentz, MD, FACS.

In this video, Brendan M. Browne, MD, and Adam Lorentz, MD, FACS, discuss the impact of the IV fluid shortage. Browne is an assistant professor of urology at Emory University School of Medicine, and Lorentz is an assistant professor and the chief of urology at Emory University Hospital Midtown in Atlanta, Georgia.

Video Transcript;

Browne: One of the interesting parts then, and you [having] the chief of urology status at Emory Midtown has gotten to deal with a lot is some of the IV fluid shortage, and really how it affects us, especially in the BPH world for irrigation, whether it be irrigation at the time of surgery, whether it be continuous bladder irrigation afterwards. It's impacted my practice a lot, because I was an outlier for maybe the entire Emory healthcare network regarding how much irrigation I used, but I've certainly been able to make some deviations and adjustments to account for that. I honestly thought about, I guess I'm going to be doing a lot more robotic simple prostatectomies or sending them over to you. Do you think that, maybe we're seeing some improvements in access to IV fluid and irrigation, but maybe one of the benefits of simple prostatectomy or robotic especially transvesical, may be shorter CBI, no intraoperative irrigation.

Lorentz: For sure. You can also do things like repair diverticula transvesically and things like that that often we might wait on for a second stage if we're doing a transurethral procedure to fix the outlet. Certainly, this has been a learning curve for us to adjust to something we consider just a basic part of our care delivery, an irrigation. Also, fortunately, we've learned how much we really can conserve beyond what we currently do. Because I think once we started with conservation measures, it showed how much we really did not rely as much on as we thought we did.

Browne: I think I cut down about 80% on the amount of irrigation that I used. And I was like, “Oh, I can still do this.”

This transcript was AI generated and edited by human editors for clarity.