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This is a quick guide to correcting electrolytes designed for new interns. It works in Apple iBooks. PDF format and e-Pub format are forthcoming. I also plan adding: IV fluids, sodium, acid-base and acute renal failure to be a quick, on-call guide for interns.

Giants pitcher, Chad Gaudin, was arrested Jan. 27 and charged, July 3 with open and gross lewdness.

“Chad Gaudin was examined in the emergency room of a local hospital while experiencing symptoms believed to be related to acute renal failure due to a condition known as rhabdomyolysis. The symptoms included confusion, dehydration and loss of orientation and/or consciousness. Although he has been accused of improperly touching another hospital patient while on the premises that night, there are differing and exonerating versions of what occurred that have been reported by eye witnesses.”

Another month of consult service and another flight of merit badges:

The first is for the case of rhabdo described in this post.

The second was for a particularly vexing acid-base conundrum that left us all scratching our heads.

And the last was for a diagnosis of Goodpastures Syndrome we made by history and U/A. We found a RBC cast that along with the description of hemoptysis a month prior to admission directed us to the diagnosis. Unfortunately we were too late and unable to salvage any kidney function and the patient now is on dialysis looking for a transplant. When I asked what to do for the badge, my fellow suggested a frowny face.

The badges can be downloaded as a PDF or Pages document and print beautifully on Avery 5163
Shipping Labels

.@pbjpaulito Did you know about this? http://t.co/ttcnT21GCzcc @kidney_boy
— Meenakshi Budhraja (@gastromom) June 29, 2013

The link goes to this article at the Huffington Post Journal of Medicine and this article from 2012:

The story is about a mystery epidemic causing widespread chronic kidney disease and end-stage renal disease in the farmers of Central America. Here is a less sensational view of the epidemic. The best part of the article is the five paragraphs that quote three independent experts that all agree that the most likely etiology is repeated episodes of dehydration:

“I think that everything points away from pesticides,” said Dr. Catharina Wesseling, an occupational and environmental epidemiologist who also is regional director of the Program on Work, Health and Environment in Central America. “It is too multinational; it is too spread out. 

“I would place my bet on repeated dehydration, acute attacks everyday. That is my bet, my guess, but nothing is proved.” 

Dr. Richard J. Johnson*, a kidney specialist at the University of Colorado, Denver, is working with other researchers investigating the cause of the disease. They too suspect chronic dehydration. “This is a new concept, but there’s some evidence supporting it,” Johnson said. “There are other ways to damage the kidney. Heavy metals, chemicals, toxins have all been considered, but to date there have been no leading candidates to explain what’s going on in Nicaragua… As these possibilities get exhausted, recurrent dehydration is moving up on the list.”

This reasoned diatribe is followed by this:

…scientists have no doubt they are facing something deadly and previously unknown to medicine.

Did the authors even read their own article? Dehydration would hardly be something unknown to medicine. After that, the article really goes off the rails with statements like:

In nations with more developed health systems, the disease that impairs the kidney’s ability to cleanse the blood is diagnosed relatively early and treated with dialysis in medical clinics. In Central America, many of the victims treat themselves at home with a cheaper but less efficient form of dialysis, or go without any dialysis at all.

Newsflash: peritoneal dialysis (the cheaper dialysis that you do at home), is not less efficient than hemodialysis.

The article tips an article that was to be published soon:

Some 30 percent of coastal dwellers had elevated levels of creatinine, strongly suggesting environment rather than agrochemicals was to blame, Brooks, the epidemiologist, said. The study is expected to be published in a peer-reviewed journal in coming weeks.

That article is now available. Here is the primary figure of the article:

masl is meters above sea level

It is an interesting story and I am going to keep my ear perked for more information.

Some facts about this CKD epidemic:

• Men outnumber women 3:1
• diagnosis typically is in the fourth decade of life
• Proteinuria is uncommon
• biopsies have been infrequently done but when available show a tubulointerstitial process with small fibrotic kidneys
• industries that have high prevalence of disease are:
• sugarcane cultivation
• mining
• fishing
• shipping
• Industries with low prevalence
• coffee growing
• service sector
• low altitude has a higher risk than high altitude

Excellent review of renal on-line learning resources in Advances in Chronic Kidney Disease including a complete round-up of the major kidney blogs: NOD, RFN, eAJKD, and Nephron Power. Here is the description of this blog:

Precious Bodily Fluids (www.pbfluids.com) is a kidney blog by Dr. Joel Topf, a Michigan-based nephrologist who has authored many nephrology-related books. He also lectures extensively on kidney topics for medical students, residents, and fellows. The blog is easy to nav- igate and features links to educational handouts, lectures, and books. The handout study guides are creatively termed ‘‘Haggadah’’ and focus on the basics of acid- base, electrolytes, and acute kidney injury. Handouts are also available on hepatitis-B- and C-related kidney disease, glomerular filtration rate/CKD staging, and rhabdomyolysis. There are accompanying question- and-answer sets with detailed explanations for acid- base and electrolytes for self-assessment. The handouts can be downloaded in a PDF format, PDF booklet format, or a Pages format (which needs special software but can be edited and customized for the individual reader). The lectures section contains 21 lectures on kidney basics as well as other points of interest such as cardiorenal syndrome, uric acid, gout, hypertension, and geriatric CKD, among others. The lectures can be accessed in a PDF or PowerPoint format. In the Books portion of the blog, there are links to books that can be downloaded for free, such as The Fluid, Electrolyte, and Acid-Base Companion; Michigan Hypertension Core Curriculum; and Intensive Care Nephrology. The blog has an archive of posts from previous years and mentions other notable kidney blogs. The user-friendly format of the educational material, complete with befitting images and videos, appeals to readers at different stages of learning.

Flattered.

It’s a nice article, but looking at online education and not even mentioning twitter seems to be skating where the puck is…

Primo was published a year ago in JAMA. I’m trying to think of another randomized controlled trial done in pre-dialysis patients looking at metabolic bone disease. I think PRIMO is the only one that looks at an end-point besides PTH. Could that be right?

I must be forgetting one (or a dozen)…

Ooops. Forgot about the proteinuria trials:

Yesterday’s post has stimulated a lot of interesting discussion on Twitter. I have updated the post with some of the tweets. Here are two more that have stimulated some additional thoughts:

@kidney_boy In a case like this would dialysis be better? Or if youre just going to give him free water back, what about a loop diuretic too?
— Matthew Wong (@MatthewLWong) June 11, 2013

@kidney_boy @skepticscalpel This and water poker poisoning incident. Posters for “the dose makes the poison.”
— Casey Lyons (@lyonscas) June 10, 2013

When I was discussing the case with my dad, a surgeon, he kept asking if I would have given a diuretic. I wouldn’t. In fact I wouldn’t have managed the case like the doctors in the case report did.

Now before I express my criticism, it must be noted that the doctors took on a lethal poisoning and undoubtedly saved his life. Criticizing their management may appear to be deducting style points from a walk off home run, who cares if they swung at a bad pitch, they won the game. I want to recognize the bravery, intelligence and success of the medical team but I don’t think it was ideal care and I feel they were just as lucky as they were good.

The crux of their treatment was a massive infusion of D5W. Dextrose infusions are the bedrock of treatment of hypernatremia. The reason is that most routine cases of hypernatremia are due to water deficits:

• diabetes insipidis
• dehydration
• altered mental status
• disrupted thirst mechanics. 

Outside of treating the side effects of too much sodium bicarbonate (remember the sodium concentration in an amp of sodium bicarbonate is 1,000 mmol/L) we don’t routinely see hypernatremia from salt overdoses.

This patient did not suffer a water deficit, he had salt overdose, a month worth of sodium in a single quart. I think the infusion of 6 liters of D5W in 30 minutes had a high chance of causing serious problems, especially since the patient in question was not volume or water depleted. Not only was he not volume depleted, the high serum sodium was pulling water from the intracellular compartment and shifting it to the interstitial and vascular space,  so not only was he not volume depleted, he likely was volume expanded. The treating doctors took a patient with a lethal sodium ingestion and treated it with a lethal water ingestion (Jennifer Strange who died in the tragic Wee for a Wii incident ingested 7.5 liters over 2 hours).

While in most cases of hypernatremia we give water because that is what is missing, in this case we need to remove the sodium. The treating doctors decided to depend on the kidneys to clear the excess sodium. The kidneys did an admirable job with extremely high urine sodium levels and concentrated urine, however they made that decision while his creatinine was going up. That seems a bit questionable.

The fluid also raised his glucose and lowered his potassium (the D5W infusion dropped the potassium from 5.1 to 2.5 in 30 minutes, I suspect this was an insulin effect). The increased glucose actually blunted the decrease in osmolality that occurred during treatment. In fact if you calculate the osmolality, the infusion of D5W had a surprisingly modest effect on serum osmolality, especially compared to it’s effect on the sodium concentration.

If you do any math on your Mac you stop using the calculator and buy Soulver.

Large change in sodium with 6 liter D5W infusion

Much more modest change in osmolality due to D5W induced hyperglycemia

Again, the treatment worked and perhaps the hyperglycemia helped protect the brain or ameliorated the cerebral desiccation of hypernatremia. I don’t know.

My dad wanted to use a diuretic because he wanted to get rid of the ingested sodium as fast as possible. The problem with a diuretic is it will decrease the maximum urine concentration so that sodium excretion occurs at a lower urine osmolality increasing urinary water losses, exactly what you don’t want in this situation. The patient was making a large amount of urine and eventually got his urine sodium up to 270 mmol/L and urine osmolality up to nearly 1,000 mOsm/Kg H2O. If he was given furosemide he would not have been able to achieve that degree of efficiency.

I would have been nervous about trying to administer 6 liters of fluid in 30 minutes and assuming dialysis could be arranged to run without delay (impossible in the middle of the night and difficult to assure during the day) I would have selected that option. The reason I like dialysis is that it would remove the toxin, sodium. 

Something that most non-nephrologists don’t recognize about dialysis is that though hemodialysis removes sodium it does not remove it by diffusion, the process by which it removes every other toxin. The dialysate has a sodium concentration that runs from 140 to 150 mmol/L, essentially isotonic. No concentration gradient means no clearance from diffusion. Sodium is removed by ultrafiltration. That means when we remove 4 liters of fluid with dialysis (we essentially use the pumps to squeeze 4 liters of plasma through the membrane’s pores, and those four liters contain isotonic sodium, so 4 liters x 140 mmol/L = 560 mmol of  sodium removed from the body.

In this situation there would some removal of sodium by diffusion because of the extreme hypernatremia and there would be additional removal by ultrafiltration, depending on how much fluid I removed. I would start a D5W infusion at a liter an hour and remove 4 liters of fluid over a four hour treatment. I would check plasma sodium and osmolality every hour and, and, I don’t know how fast I would go:

1. Should I try to normalize the sodium as fast as possible? 
2. Should I lower the sodium as fast as possible until the seizing stops and spontaneous movement returns?
3. Should I lower the sodium at a target rate of 12 mmol/L per hour? 5 mmol/L per hour? 2 mmol/L per hour?

I don’t know but if forced to make a decision I think I would go with answer 2.

How would you manage a sodium of 191?

I wrote a post for the Pediatric Career blog. It is about July first, the most significant date in the academic medicine calendar. I did not discuss patient risk or medical mistakes. I have blogged about those before. I discussed how to leverage this new beginning to develop a fulfilling and productive career in medicine. Read it.

Highest CPK I have ever seen:

That is the first CPK over one million I have seen. I love how the CPK of 4,000 on day one, you know the CPK that is 20x the upper limit of normal, is not high enough to even be rendered on the graph. For the scientific-minded here is the same data on a log rhythmic scale:

We were able to successfully alkalinize the urine (EBM purists can bite me, I  believe the bench data here) and she never became oliguric, however on day three her potassium was 7 and we initiated dialysis. Surprisingly, phosphorous never got out of control.

She also had the highest CRP I have ever seen, 147.

The etiology you ask? She presented three days after a sore throat. We initially discounted viral rhabdo because the CPKs were so high but the Coxsackie B type 3 and 4 antibodies were off the scale and the literature is sprinkled with similar case reports (here and here). Muscle biopsy results are pending.

Muddy brown cast (day one, unspun specimen):

Urine sample (day two with urine pH of 8.5), no red cell on U/A

.@kidney_boy re:CPK I see Phos was never uncontrolled – anything to say about Ca both at presentation & during alkalinisation? #nephrology
— Tom Oates (@toates_19) June 4, 2013

See this:

If you want to start a fight among nephrologists, start talking about paying donors for their kidneys. This may be the most contentious issue in nephrology. I personally am a believer in the concept but trying to imagine a free market for organs makes me nauseous.

Mitra Mahdavi-Mazdeh. Kidney International, 2012

USRDS