The Use of Poiseuille’s Law in Comparing Various Flow Rates

by James Berg

Submitted : Fall 2020

Fluid resuscitation is a key element in the management of critically sick and injured patients. Often, this requires immediate intervention to give the patient the best chances of survival possible. There are a variety of different sizes of peripheral venous catheters that provide access to the body’s circulatory system in order to facilitate fluid resuscitation. By deriving Poiseuille’s Law, which describes the flow of fluid through a closed cylindrical pipe, the relative change in flow rates of infused intravenous (IV) fluid are assessed and compared between the varies sizes of IV catheters, the length of the IV catheters, and the pressure at which the fluid is infused to determine which variable will have the greatest change in flow rate. Although large bore IV access has long been considered the gold standard, the results from this study demonstrate that the pressure at which the fluid is infused into the patient has a much greater impact on the change in flow rate of the infused fluid compared to the size of the catheter used.

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