Maintenance of acid-base homeostasis is a vital function of the living organism. Deviations of systemic acidity in either direction can impose adverse consequences and when severe can threaten life itself. Acid-base disorders frequently are encountered in the outpatient and especially in the inpatient setting. Effective management of acid-base disturbances, commonly a challenging task, rests wi...

BACKGROUND Intensivists spend much of their time managing problems related to fluids, electrolytes, and blood pH. Recent advances in the understanding of acid-base physiology have resulted from the application of basic physical-chemical principles of aqueous solutions to blood plasma. All changes in blood pH, in health and in disease, occur through changes in three variables: carbon dioxide, re...

The reaction, the osmotic pressure, and the volume relationships of the body fluids are closely dependent on the properly regulated acid-base equilibrium. We have attempted to work out some of the regulatory mechanisms for the preservat.ion of acidbase equilibrium during the process of heavy sweating in ways analogous to those employed in the many similar studies of blood and urine. The changes...

The acidosis that occurs during clinical anaesthesia was formerly thought to be metabolic in origin because of inefficient carbohydrate breakdown in the unconscious state (Van Slyke, Austin, and Cullen, 1922). More recent authors (Taylor and Roos, 1950; Beecher and Murphy, 1950) have suggested that the acidosis is respiratory, due to defective ventilation, and the present work was undertaken to...

The subject of acid-base balance has become one of increasing complexity over the past two decades. Along with better understanding of the processes involved has come an array of confusing terms and ideas that leaves most physicians completely bewildered. For example, in a recent article on acid-base balance, the author listed six commonly used chemical definitions of the words "base" and "acid...