How do doctors treat severe over-hydration (like the famous water drinking contest)?
In: Biology
If the person has healthy kidneys, they’d give lots and lots of additional fluid with sodium in it (or perhaps a more “complete” solution like lactated ringer’s solution.) If it was severe enough and they wanted to treat it aggressively, they’d give a hypertonic saline solution that has more sodium than the blood normally does to balance it out, but you have to be careful to monitor that because you can overshoot the target. In MOST cases they’ll use normal saline (or again, something close to it) to bring the sodium level back down.
I just realized this is ELI5 and not nostupidquestions, but I’m going to leave the answer and let it get taken down.
Latest Answers