medication dosage question

how many grams of dextrose are in each 1 liter bag of solution?

there are 5 grams of protein per 100/ml of solution, or 50 grams of dextrose in each liter of 5% dextrose in water. this is equivalent to 170 calories/liter. (page 158, intravenous therapy: clinical principles and practice, by judy terry, leslie baranowski, rose anne lonsway and carolyn hedrick, published by the intravenous nurses society, 1995). for others who might be reading this, you can find this information on a bag of this solution when you are in the clinical area.

how many grams of dextrose will this patient receive in a 24 hr period?

calculate how many mls of the fluid the patient is going to receive in 24 hours:

now, calculate the number of grams based on the figure above of 5 grams of dextrose per 100 ml:

how many calories will this patient receive in a 24 hrs period from his iv fluid?

your answers to these questions can end up being totally different if you use different caloric values to do these calculations. many sources will tell you that carbohydrates yield 4 kcalories per gram. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/food_energy). using that as a foundation for these questions, this would change the caloric value of a liter of 5% dextrose in water to 200 calories per liter (50 grams x 4 calories/gram) so that the patient would be getting 432 calories in a 24 hour period instead of the 367.2 calories.

there was actually a question on my state board exam back in 1975 that asked how many calories there were in a liter of 5% dextrose in water. at the time i calculated it as 50 grams x 4 calories per gram, or 200 calories, and that was one of the answer choices. there are still going to be 50 grams of dextrose (carbohydrate) in the liter of fluid (0.05[percentage as a decimal] grams x 1000 ml). that figure will not change.