Today’s included the therapeutic application of electricity
and a real oddity: an adolescent with a potassium of 1.8 (yes, I repeated it).
Emergency Medicine can be mundane occasionally, but days like today make for a really nice change.
11 thoughts on “A shocking day at work”
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Do you know the cause of the low potassium? Seems like we had a low potassium like that back in my training days….toluene/glue sniffing?
Nice! Was the Fibber stable?
Not sure about the K, haven’t seen one that low – just in the mid 2s
Bulimia?
Prolonged diarrhea? Laxative overuse? Renal wasting? Eating too much licorice?
Guessing the cause of the low K could get interesting.
Did you ask the teenager for the diagnosis. Usually they know everything.
hypokalemic periodic paralysis?
Sniffing paint (toluene) was the cause of the lowest potassium I ever saw.
Was the adolescent Asian? I’ve had one idiopathic hypoK and I’ve heard it’s more common in that population.
I cannot say any more about the case, as it would probably lead to a specific patient (how many of these are there, anyway?). So, no more from me.
I have no idea what all this means, but it looks complex. I’m guessing that you don’t want your charts to have a piece of paper like that stuck in them.