can you die by gravity?

[bananatyke]

intravenus drip death - will you die if your intravenus drip is lower than your body?

[tigga]

Probably !. If the bag is big enough, it will act as though you are giving blood.. and take all of it off you.

[SteveD]

Unlikely.  The bag on an intravenous drip will have a volume of a litre or so.  If it is placed lower than the body, blood will tend to drain into it until it is full.  However, it is likely that blood would clot in the cannula in your vein before this happens.

 

[punkmuppet]

Yeah gravity can kill you if it catches you anywhere above around 30ft in the air :P

[clarabel82]

don't the lines that go into you have a sort of one way only thing? I'm sure mine did when I was being pumped full of antibiotics a few weeks ago, when it was empty the nurses took it off the wall and I just had it on my bed, no blood went back into it though,

[cg1308]

i'm pretty confident that they have a valve to stop this happening - like if the drip stand fell over.

But, if they dont then the previous answers are correct - the blood you would lose into a bag is not enough to do and harm.

(unless you have severe blood loss already which is why the drip bad was given in the first place!)