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Saline Solution
What
is Saline Solution?
By Mary Lougee
The most common seasoning
that people put on their food is sodium chloride or table salt.
The human body needs salt
for many of its functions such as maintaining the right fluid balance,
absorbing and transporting nutrients, maintaining blood pressure, transmitting
nerve signals and for the contraction and relaxation of muscles.
Saline solution is used in
many medical applications.
What Is Saline Solution
Made Up Of?
In chemistry, a solution is
a homogeneous mixture containing two or more substances in which a solute is
the substance that is dissolved in a solvent.
Saline solution is sodium
chloride at 0.85 to 0.9 added to and dissolved in 100 mL of purified water.
How Do You Make a Saline
Solution?
Normal saline is isotonic to
your body fluids, meaning that it is in the same concentration that naturally
occurs in the human body.
You can make your own saline
solution with ordinary table salt and water.
Choose table salt that is
without iodine. Use distilled water so that it is purified and better than
regular tap water.
Dissolve 1 teaspoon of salt
per 1 cup or 8 fluid ounces of distilled water.
If you want a sterile solution,
you simply dissolve the salt in boiling water, and then you can use it for
wound care.
Make certain to place a lid
on the container you will store the saline solution in so that no bacteria can
be introduced to it.
Note that commercial contact
lens solution has added buffers to be gentle to your eyes, and this recipe
doesn't have buffers.
What Is a Saline Solution
IV?
Sodium chloride solution for
intravenous use is normal saline.
When someone has been sick
with influenza or a stomach virus, they often become dehydrated from not
drinking enough fluids and having bouts of vomiting and diarrhea.
The saline solution in an IV
form is administered through a vein to re-hydrate the body in a hospital or
other medical office.
What Is a Saline Injection?
Since saline solution is a
sterile formula, it is used in any medical setting to flush out a catheter or
IV after medication is administered to a patient.
It serves as a sort of
cleaning and sterilizing agent in this capacity when it is an injectable form.
What Is Saline Solution
Good For?
Saline solution has many
applications in the world of medicine.
It can be used to clean
wounds, in an IV drip for dehydration and electrolyte imbalances and to flush
catheters or IVs.
Saline solution is often
recommended by doctors to use as nasal drops or a nasal irrigation to clear
congestion, keep the nasal cavities moist and reduce postnasal drip due to
colds or allergies.
Eye drops often contain
saline solution to treat red eyes, dryness or tearing that can be a side effect
of the common cold.
Saline solution can be used
as an inhaler to help create mucus and allow you to get rid of it by coughing
it out.
Mary
Lougee has been writing about
chemistry, biology, algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus for more than
12 years. She gained the knowledge in these fields by taking accelerated
classes throughout college while gaining her degree.
