Today I went to see Richard Stern talk about Therapeutic Considerations in the Hyponatremic Patient. It was an excellent talk. One of the concepts he introduced, at least to me, was the use of DDAVP in the patient with severe hyponatremia.
His argument was that the biggest threat to to these patients is the overly rapid correction of sodium due to the sudden suppression of endogenous ADH in the middle of therapy. This is exactly what I was worried about when I was treating that severe case of hyponatremia a couple of weeks ago. My solution up to now is to write an order for the nurse to call me if the patient's urine output rises over 100 mL an hour. Unfortunately this is an unusual call order and nurse compliance with it is questionable.
He proposes using DDAVP to essentially lock, or hold constant urinary losses. Then you use 3% saline and the increases in plasma sodium should be more predictable.
This maneuver has a high degree of difficulty but I think it solves an important problem. I'm going to try this on my next case of extreme hyponatremia.
Has anyone else used this technique?
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