Just got my second rhabdomyolysis patient in the last 2 months. Both had anuric acute renal failure and both had CPKs over 100,000.
In fellowship, the dogma was that sodium bicarbonate was ineffective and could do harm. The reasoning was that alkalinizing urine made calcium-phosphate less soluble, increasing the likelihood of calcification in the tubule extending the renal damage.
Recently, I found a paper from the Journal of Trauma 2004 by Brown and Rhee (Alternative) which showed compelling trends for improved outcomes with mannitol and bicarbonate. What was so impressive to me was that as the disease got more severe (higher CPK) the experimental group appeared to do relatively better. The authors were prevented from reaching a significant p value primarily by having too few patients with severe rhabdo.
I will use the handout from a prior morning report on the subject for the teaching session on Monday.
Rhabdo for Morning Report
