More than a few times this week, I have found myself prescribing Jewish Penicillin, chicken noodle soup. CNS is rich in sodium so it is just about the best way to prescribe volume repletion in the out-patent arena. So i was delighted to see one of the dietician students projects on display in the hospital:
1720 mg of sodium per can of Swanson 100% Natural Chicken Broth (two 240 mL servings per can). So how does that stack up against old faithful, normal saline?
Normal saline has 154 mmol of sodium per liter or 3,542 mg of sodium per liter (154 mEq x 23 mg per mmol, the molecular weight of sodium), so a can of chicken soup is equivalent to about half a bag of normal saline.
Update: I don't get many good comments on Blogger but I got this pitch perfect comment on Twitter:
@kidney_boy Nice. Didn't fully appreciate that a bag of saline was 3.5gm Na! Makes me laugh thinking of the 2gm Na diet pts getting IVF!
— Aaron Logan (@pyknosis) September 15, 2012
