Vehicle / Diluent
Sterile Water
Last updated
Water for injection with nothing added: no preservative, no salt, no buffer. It dissolves lyophilised powder as well as bacteriostatic water does, but it offers no protection against organisms introduced when the stopper is pierced. Plain water is also hypotonic, meaning less concentrated than blood.
Why it matters here
Choosing this vehicle removes the input that generates a multi-week beyond-use date. A vial reconstituted with sterile water does not inherit the 28-day window that bacteriostatic water plus refrigeration produces, and our records derive that difference rather than assuming it.
What it is not
Sterile and bacteriostatic are one word apart and mean different things: sterile describes the water as supplied, while bacteriostatic describes what it keeps doing after the vial is opened, and only one of the two does the second thing.
Also called
- sterile water
- swfi
- sterile water for injection
SWFI on a label stands for Sterile Water for Injection, the pharmacopoeial name for the same fluid.
Compounds carrying this term
None on file yet. This term is in the controlled vocabulary but no compound record currently uses it — which is a statement about our coverage, not about the term.