Recent Developments In The Perioperative Fluid Management For The Paediatric Patients

Maintenance fluid therapy represents the volume of fluids and amount of electrolytes and glucose needed to replace anticipated physiological losses from breath, sweat and urine and to prevent hypoglycaemia. In the past 50 years, this therapy was based on Holliday and Segar's formula, which proposed to match children's water and electrolyte requirements on a weight-based calculation using hypotonic solutions. Nevertheless, recent researches found that it is apt to hyponatraemia by using hypotonic solutions postoperatively. Furthermore, with nonosmotic secretion of antidiuretic hormone and the reduction of the ability of the kidneys to excrete free water, serum sodium concentration declined dramatically. Therefore, how to choose the best maintenance infusion protocol for each child is still a complicated problem, which needs further investigation in the future.