Dyselectrolytemia in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases with acute exacerbation

Summary: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is one of the leading causes of mortality and morbidity world wide. Due to lack of awareness about the precipitating factors and predictors of prognosis, cases of acute exacerbation of COPD often suffer the fatal outcomes. In our study we assessed the levels of serum sodium and potassium in subjects with acute episodes of COPD and their healthy controls. We found a significantly low level of serum sodium (133 ± 6.86 meq/lit) and potassium (3.39 ± 0.96 meq/lit)) in subjects with acute exacerbation of COPD than their healthy counterparts [sodium-142 ± 2.28 meq/lit and potassium- 4.52 ± 0.02 meq/lit (p<0.05)]. Therefore, our study findings suggest that, serum sodium and potassium levels may get deranged in subjects with acute exacerbations of COPD which should be routinely checked for to avoid fatal outcomes.