So I was drinking a can of Coke and thinking about all the wonderful uses a Coke can has in an emergency situation. It can carry and boil water, used as a stove, be cut or torn into a myriad of useful shapes. Then I started thinking, the fluid inside should be completely sterile right? Result of the canning process? So it should be fine (if possibly painful) to irrigate wounds with. If not the sticky corn syrup version, a sugar free diet soft drink?

Anyone with a medical background want to confirm or deny this thought?

I'd be worried about the sugar going into the wound, though.

My mother has a 12 pack of club soda in the family med stash at home, for just this reason.

It is sterile and ironically, it's often a better choice to give someone to drink in a disaster if the water supply is suspect because of it's sterility.

Other than that, I wouldn't count on it stopping any bleeding or cleaning out any wounds other than in a very superficial way. The sugar content would also be a great way to attract insects to the wound.

The best thing for wound irrigation in the field is water and plenty of it. The cleaner the better.

Back when we would make excursions south of the border, Dad always told us to drink coke in a bottle rather than water from a glass.