Fluid treatment settings

Use fluid treatment settings to quickly and easily calculate the rate to give a fluid treatment to a patient.. To calculate fluid rates, SmartFlow uses information from the Veterinary Emergency Critical Care Manual by Karol A. Mathews.

When you add a fluid to a patient's flowsheet, SmartFlow uses the patient's weight to calculate the fluid treatment rate for the patient. Then, if the patient is dehydrated, you can use the Dehydration (%) and Restore dehydration over (hour) boxes to set applicable values. As a result, SmartFlow calculates the total fluid rate and shows it in the Hourly fluid rate box.

Note: If necessary, you can change the value shown in the Hourly fluid rate box manually.

Note: The formula that SmartFlow uses to calculate the fluid rate per hour is (1.2 × (patient weight (kg)⁰·⁷⁵) × 70) ÷ 24 (hours).

Maintenance rate multiples

The fluid treatment settings include buttons that you can use to quickly and easily add multiples to the maintenance rate. These are the available multiples:

As an alternative, you can select Sx rate to automatically calculate a surgery fluid rate. The surgery fluid rate is 5ml/kg/hour.

Buttons that you can use to add multiples to the maintenance rate — Figure 1. Buttons for maintenance rate multiples

Note: When you use a template to add a fluid treatment to a flowsheet, SmartFlow does not keep the selected multiple of the source treatment. If necessary, you must select the applicable multiple again after you use the template to add a fluid treatment a flowsheet.

Additives

You can use the fluid treatment settings to add an additive to a fluid. Use the boxes of the Additive setting to:

Select the applicable additive
Select the concentration of the additive
Select the unit of measurement of the additive
Figure 2. Additive boxes

To add one more additive, select More additives.

Changes to the fluid treatment formula

To change the fluid treatment formula that SmartFlow uses, you must contact IDEXX customer support. They can change the formula to:

(30 × (patient weight (kg)¹) + 70) ÷ 24 (hours)
(48 × (patient weight (kg)¹)) ÷ 24 (hours)
(60 × (patient weight (kg)¹)) ÷ 24 (hours)
(66 × (patient weight (kg)¹)) ÷ 24 (hours)
(72 × (patient weight (kg)¹)) ÷ 24 (hours)
(84 × (patient weight (kg)⁰·⁷⁵)) ÷ 24 (hours)
(105 × (patient weight (kg)⁰·⁷⁵)) ÷ 24 (hours)
(110 × (patient weight (kg)⁰·⁷⁵)) ÷ 24 (hours)
(132 × (patient weight (kg)⁰·⁷⁵)) ÷ 24 (hours)

Note: If IDEXX customer support does not have the fluid treatment formula that you want, you can go to ideas.smartflowsheet.com and make a feature request.