Intravenous (IV) rehydration therapy in children with gastroenteritis between rapid-large and standard volume

An estimated of more than 200,000 children has been hospitalized for gastroenteritis in the U.S every year.
Although this irritation or infection of the digestive track in in adults usually easily to recovery. However, for the children and older adults, it may leading to dehydration, and about more than 0.1% causing death because severe diarrhea and dehydration.

Meanwhile, the treatment often used in gastroenteritis is through standard and rapid of intravenous (IV) rehydration, but recent study suggested that the rapid IV rehydration no better outcomes than standard procedure.

According to new suggestion presented at the 2011 Annual Meeting of Pediatric Academic Societies and Asian Society for Pediatric Research, the use of rapid and large volume of IV rehydration did not improve the outcomes, such as rehydration within 2 hours after treatment, rehydration scores, and hospital admission. In fact, in the revisit cases, rapid IV rehydration group showed more longer hospital stay.

This suggestion based on randomized trial among 226 children (aged 3 months to 11 years), which 112 children use standard IV rehydration (0.9 saline, 20 mL/kg, over 1 h) and 114 children use rapid IV rehydration (0.9% saline, 60 mL/kg, over 1 h).
In another 3 hours,both group subsequently received IV fluids and standard oral rehydration therapy.

Despite this negative results may caused by the possibility of hyperchloremic metabolic acidosis resulting from the administration of larger volume of fluid, lag time in initiating treatment, and altered dehydration scores by undefined factors, the authors concluded that the risk of rapid IV rehydration outweigh the benefits.

In addition the authors though that the use of oral rehydration therapy should be optimized because it is also suitable for the children and less application in the treatment.