Air in your lines?

[jedimaster]

Have you seen the new Demian movie where the bad woman injects air into a blood line to kill the demon's "mother"?....well...everytime I'm finishing the set up, doing the needle pull to verify pressures, sometimes there is a bit of air that just won't go away...so I end injecting it into my blood stream...and allways scared that I'm about to kill myself...has this happened to you?

[kitkatz]

They have scared me a few times with air in the lines and they have pulled some air out of me into the lines.  They say it would take quite a bit of air to take you out.  I would not want to find out how much either so I watch everyone like a hawk when coming on or off the machine.

[BigSky]

I once seen a bunch of air bubbles go through the line heard a gurgling sound as it went into my fistula.  Scared the crap out of me when I heard that sound.  Nurse thought I was crazy that I heard it as soon as I heard it I clamped my lines off.  Anyway after that happened I looked it up to see just how much was needed to cause problems.  This is what I had found on it.

A single bubble isn’t going to do the trick.
Let’s review the blood’s circulation pattern. Blood from the body flows into the right side of the heart, then out to the lungs, back to the left side of the heart where it is pumped to the body, thus completing the circuit. The lungs are excellent filters. They trap small blood clots and injected air bubbles. In actuality, the air bubble would be shattered into microbubbles by the churning action of the right ventricle, which pumps the blood into the lungs, and these tiny bubbles would dissolve into the blood. Any bubbles that survived this “washing machine” would be filtered by the lungs.

Fifty to sixty CCs injected rapidly would travel into the right ventricle, where it could cut off the flow of blood. The beating heart relies upon the non-compressibility of liquids (blood in this case) to squeeze the blood out of the ventricles. Air, as are other gases, is compressible. This produces a sort of “vapor lock,” and almost instantaneous death can result.

[kitkatz]

Why thank you. I will be watching them for the empty needles then!

[angieskidney]

For some reason on rinseback (runback) there ended up being a substancial amount of air in my line and the nurse caught it. She said she didn't think it was 10 cc's but still she wanted to be safe than sorry. The saline bag still had saline in it. Don't know where the air came from

[Bajanne]

Since I was a child, there was always this talk about a nurse being able to kill you by allowing air in the needle.  Please remember that I had my first operation at age 10 (appendectomy), the first of many.  I have always had the habit of watching the nurse send up the syringe before injecting, or the fluid in my drip.  One little bubble and I used to be sure someone did something about it.  As I got older I was told that it would take a great deal to do me off, so I am a bit less apprehensive these days.  Especially since I have seen some bubbles go into my venous when dialysis is starting and so far, I'm still here!

[angieskidney]

This wasn't a few bubbles. I had my first surgery when I was 16. What got me wondering is because the nurse was more worried about this air than I was. When your nurse is reacting like that I think it would make anyone wonder..


http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1498868/03222005/story.jhtml

http://forums.animesuki.com/archive/index.php/t-32641.html

[shay_pcb]

I'm not on hemo, but when I was in the hospital with an IV the nurse said that it would take the entire tube filled with air to hurt you, so I could imagine how much it would take to kill you....a lot...