Disorders of water balance and serum Na ( S Na ) are very common in hospitalized patients [ 1 ] . In health, water balance and plasma osmolality, and thereby S Na , are tightly regulated by the kidney, which makes minute-by-minute adjustments to the composition of urine in order to maintain a near-constant plasma osmolality. The development of hyponatremia or hypernatremia may therefore re fl e...

Disorders of body fluids are among the most commonly encountered problems in the practice of clinical medicine. This is in large part because many different disease states can potentially disrupt the finely balanced mechanisms that control the intake and output of water and solute. Since body water is the primary determinant of the osmolality of the extracellular fluid (ECF), disorders of water...

The water intake in hypertensive rats was investigated. Rats made hypertensive by renal ischemia increased their water consumption by 75 per cent over the preoperative level. Polyuria was associated with this polydipsia and the independence of these occurrences from a number of other factors was demonstrated. It was found that the presence of a normal kidney exerted a compensatory influence whi...