Barrier property is the most important factor affecting the quality of IV bags. Owing to the low barrier property of the content contact package, a barrier package is needed for prevention of oxygen and moisture permeation. Besides, nitrogen is applied to take place of the air between the inner package and barrier package. Therefore, oxygen transmission as well as nitrogen and moisture transmission should be tested. Labthink VAC-V series of differential pressure gas permeation testers can accomplish relevant testing.

1.  IV Bag Barrier Test requirement
Although New IV bag has many prominent advantages over traditional glass package, it also have disadvantages, such as barrier property, heat stability and transparency, among which barrier property is the most important one.

• Oxygen is the main factor which causes the deterioration of intravenous fluids. If the oxygen barrier property of intravenoous bag cannot perform well, it might cause the medicine to deteriorate before the guarantee date and the effect is unimaginable. As a result, antioxidant, metal-chelator and inert gases are often employed in order to reduce the oxygen in the packages, postpone and prevent the liquid from oxygenation.
• Nitrogen is stable and often used with little carbon-dioxide as ‘inert gases’ to replace the air inside bags. If the barrier property against nitrogen is not strong enough, the nitrogen would permeate through bags. It might reduce the protection effect of inert gases and increase the oxygen in the package.
• Vapor permeation affects the concentration of medicines especially solute liquid for injection. Such situation will increase the difficulty of medicine concentration and vital risks. As the good barrier property of glass is well known, it can be considered that gases and vapor cannot permeate through glasses. Soft plastic does not have such barrier property thus it is necessary to test the barrier property of IV bag.

2. The Influence of Nitrogen Permeation Rate Test
Nitrogen transmission rate test through IV bag film has always been noticeable. How to test the IV bag ?

• Currently only manometric principle instrument can test the permeation property of many gases (H2、N2、Air、O2、CO2 and so on).If the user can put the gas source under control and deal with the end gas (sometimes flammable, explosive or toxic), the instrument could be used to test the permeation property of some special gases (pay special attention to safety issue).

3.  The Development of Test Technology

• Generally speaking, IV bag film gas permeation test needs manometric principlel instrument now. But if it is the oxygen permeation rate test of IV bags, it needs equal pressure principle instruments. Two investments to two instruments, it raised the maintenance fee and investment of equipments as well as lower the utilization of all equipments. PERME-DM2/330, double method gas permeation rate test instrument has been introduced by Labthink Instruments Co.,Ltd. It is able to conduct differential pressure and equal pressure tests.

• Furthermore it can test the oxygen permeation rate of IV bags and bottles. It is a better test equipment choice to medical packaging industry and IV bag manufacturers. It can optimize the equipment cost, data accuracy and equipment utilization.

The application of multi-chamber IV bags is the great development of IV bags. Labthink is willing to have more communication and cooperation will pharmaceutical companies and institutions.

Labthink Instruments Co., Ltd.
No. 144 Wuyingshan Road, Jinan 250031, China

Shirley Wu

trade2@labthink.cn
Tel: 0086 531 85811021