Even some people who have come to doctors a couple of times in their life have some basic medical knowledge. Of course, the less you encounter the need for attention from doctors, the better - that means health is in order. However, it is still worth having some idea of the most common procedures: who knows at what point they can come in handy.
Let's start with a simple
Ordinary people use simpler terms than "infusion" and "injection." Instead of the last word, a more familiar “injection” appears in everyday life. Probably everyone faced this procedure - at least once in a lifetime, at least at the dentist. Its meaning: the rapid introduction into the body of a drug in a strictly defined quantity. Injections are equally important when a person cannot take the medicine himself, either as a result of fainting, or as a result of vomiting, or as a result of the fact that the drug cannot be taken by swallowing (for example, it is destroyed by the aggressive environment of the stomach). There are several types of injections. Such as subcutaneous and intramuscular, even a person without a special education can do. Some (in particular, diabetics) even inject their own medicine. The main thing is that the skin is disinfected, and the syringe is sterile. Naturally, intraarticular, intravenous, and intraosseous injections can only be delivered by a paramedic.
More complicated procedure
We now deal with the concept of "infusion." That this word is a synonym for the familiar term “dropper”, fewer people already know. The meaning of the procedure is the slow but continuous flow of the prescribed drug into the patient’s blood. A needle (catheter) is inserted into either a vein or an artery. In another way, infusion cannot be carried out. That this is a complex process that requires proven skills and is fraught with fatal consequences in case of error, is clear to everyone. So at home, "on your knee", you can’t put the dropper, you must observe the medical staff.
What are the goals of the doctors when setting an infusion?
With a fairly extensive list of diseases, the patient needs just an infusion. What are these cases? First of all, a lot of blood loss. You can’t restore it without a dropper. The next option is the nutrition of the body, which itself cannot temporarily take food (for example, after operations on the intestines and stomach; with a long absence of nutrition, when the gastrointestinal tract has “forgotten how” to work; with general weakness of the body). Intravenous infusion is essential for the treatment of cancer: drugs must have a predetermined concentration in the blood for a certain time. One-time injections are indispensable here. Missing blood components (red blood cells and platelets) are delivered in the same way.
Varieties of procedure
In principle, there are two of them, if you focus on how the infusion is done. What kind of species are these? Inkjet and drip. Jet infusion is done when the desired medicine is in a small volume, or it must be introduced into the body very quickly. Drip, on the contrary, involves a low, but constant speed and a large amount of the drug (or blood, or plasma). Its distinctive advantage is that the internal pressure on the walls of the veins and arteries practically does not change, that is, the infusion is done in a milder, sparing mode. In this case, a very long time that will have to be spent under a dropper can be considered a disadvantage.
Modern devices, by which intravenous infusion is carried out, are equipped with a special safety valve that blocks the dropper when the solution ends in it. However, some hospitals still use older systems where there is no such valve. In this case, the medical staff or relatives of the patient have to monitor the level of the solution so that an air bubble does not enter the vein.