Keywords
Hyponatremia
intensive care unit and Mortality
severity
How to Cite
Abstract
Objective: To measure the frequency of hyponatremia in critically ill patients and correlate it to severity of critical illness.
Study design: Quasi-experimental study
Place and duration of study: Medicine department of Fazaia Ruth Pfau Medical College
PAF Base Faisal
Methodology: After approval from the ethical Institutional Review Board (IRB), we studied a sample of 280 patients admitted to intensive care unit of hospital. The patients were randomized into two groups based on the development of hyponatremia and they were followed for adverse outcomes. The primary outcome was the severity of disease quantified through quick-Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) and we correlated it to hyponatremia.
Results: The primary outcome was the severity of critical illness quantified by SOFA score. The group-H patients had high severity of illness indicated by Q-SOFA. Forty-one (29.3%) patients had Q-SOFA score ≥2 in group-H and only 8 (5.7%) patients in group-N had score greater than equal to 2 with p value of <0.001. The severity of illness was low in 132(94.3%) patients, moderate in 6 (4.3%) patients and high in 2 (1.4%) patients in group-N and it was low in 99 (70.7%) patients, moderate in 29 (20.7%) patients and high in 12 (8.6%) patients with p value of <0.001
Conclusion: We concluded that hyponatremia is not merely a laboratory anomaly but a clinically relevant indicator of disease severity in critically ill patients