Abstract
Hypernatremia developing in nonhospitalized adults is predominantly a disease of
the elderly and mentally handicapped patients, possibly revealing inadequate
nursing care of these patients. It has long been claimed that the duration of
hypernatremia and its rate of correction are correlated with improvement in
patients' neurologic status. Since there are only a handful of cases with serum
sodium levels greater than 200 mEq/L until recently, it is not clear at what
rate plasma sodium concentration can be safely normalized in severe
hypernatremic patients. We report a case of severe hypernatremia with survival.
This patient underwent rapid correction of serum sodium concentration during the
management of this metabolic derangement using isotonic solution.