Development of Hypernatremia in Critically Ill Patients: Prospective Analysis

Hypernatremia is frequently encountered in patients admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and associated with increased mortality and length of stay. Previous studies focused on predictors in the development and recovery of hypernatremia by including amount and types of administered medication, fluid balance, laboratory results and changes in vital signs. However, data of larger populations or data on infusion rates, fluid and sodium balance or renal replacement therapy is lacking. The predecessor of this study was the HYPNIC trial which found that increased sodium load en decreased sodium excretion preceded hypernatremia development, but was lacking information on the first 48 hours, fluid balances were manually collected before a new data collection system was introduced and was suffering from substantial amounts of missing data and small population for trend analysis.

This study aims to provide better insight in the development and recovery of hypernatremia while paying attention to the limitations from the HYPNIC trial.