Cross-cultural communication （111）　

111) Japanese people's love of IV drip
Whether it's a cold or diarrhea, there are still many patients who visit the doctor and request an IV drip in Japan. From a medical perspective, the only cases where an IV drip is necessary are when there is serious dehydration and the patient is unable to take in fluids orally, or when there is a serious infection and it is necessary to quickly introduce antibiotics via an IV drip. Therefore, it is better to read news articles about professional athletes who have managed to play in a game despite receiving an IV drip with normal saline.

By the way, do Japanese people like IV drip more than people from other countries? At least compared to the American and French people I have treated, Japanese people are quite fond of IV drip. At the American Hospital of Paris, I treated many Japanese patients, and many of them wanted IV drip when they had a cold or diarrhea. As part of the hospital system, IV drip was supposed to be administered in the emergency department treatment room. The doctors in the emergency department were mostly from English-speaking countries like Ireland and the UK, and when I took Japanese patients to them, they often refused to give them an IV drip, saying that there was no medical indication for it. So I would say, “Japanese people have a strong belief in IV drip, so please don't be so strict about it and give them an IV drip. It's just an electrolyte solution, so there won't be any side effects, and you'll get a consultation fee too.” I asked them several times with specific explanations, and they started to do it without complaining. Back in the 1980s, when I was working as a doctor in Osaka, there was a hospital in Ikuno-ku where I was sometimes asked to work emergency duty. This area had a large population of Korean and Chinese residents. Whenever a patient, especially a first-generation Korean resident, came to the emergency room, they always requested an IV injection or an IV drip.

This was when I was doing a private practice in Osaka. There was a Chinese community near my office, and Chinese patients also preferred IV injections and IV drip. This suggests that the preference for IVs may be a medical culture of East Asia rather than Japan alone.

| BACK |