Boston—Patients undergoing major abdominal procedures have an independent risk for mortality when at least 6 L of IV fluid are administered on the day of surgery.
The retrospective study, which used a large administrative database of roughly 36,000 patient discharges from 393 hospitals across the United States, found that patients receiving at least 6 L of IV fluid on the day of surgery had a 48-hour inpatient mortality rate that was 48% higher than expected (Figure).
