Sterile Saline Shortage for Irrigation of Osteotomy: Ideas?

I would appreciate any ideas as well.

If you are a good Schein customer they have plenty.

i do IV Sedation sometimes I use D5W (dextrose in NaCl)

I believe Carl Misch advocated use of D5W. Said it was less corrosive to drills.

Have never heard of any such shortage

We use sterile saline from bottles irrigated with syringe by the assistant.

As an implant surgeon, I have been using an alternate "solution" for about 3 years now. This shortage will continue for the next 12-18 months and IV bags are the hardest to find. Switch to a plastic bottle delivery system, but it needs to be a very specific type of bottle. You can purchase large plastic inserts (spike adapter) that are designed to pierce through the plastic cap of the bottle. This works extremely well and are much more affordable. Contact Predictable Surgical Technologies. (disclaimer: Not intended to be an advertisement)

Plenty of sterile water for irrigation. 1000ml bags.

Isn't that funny we went to order last month and they told us there was a shortage and we waited a month, Steven Medical supplies. Jeez you think some independent surgical supplier would jump on this?

Sterile water or 1/2 NS are both adequate substitutes. With regards to the comment about using D5W as an IV fluid, that's not the best choice. D5W is listed as isotonic on the bag, but in vivo after the dextrose is metabolized, it in fact becomes a hypo tonic solution. This potentially can cause increased swelling. Better choice is NS or D5 1/2NS.

I stopped using normal saline & switched to sterile water for irrigation a number of years ago. The NS will ruin your bur marking's visibility.

second sterile water. it works just as well, is readily available.

There is no harm is using irrigation during drilling but there is no benefit either. The reason irrigation is advised is because the occurrence of unexplained failures is often inaccurately blamed on burning the bone during drilling. The unexplained failures are most often the due to the type of bone the implant is placed in rather than the temperature of the drill. However very few every consider the bone as the reason for failure. I never use irrigation with my drills and I don't replace them until they stop cutting.