Hypernatremia can turn one abnormal lab value into a lot of decisions. What’s driving it? How quickly can you correct it? Which fluids make sense? And once treatment starts, how do you adjust the plan as the sodium changes?
We built Standards of Care (formerly Plumb’s Pro) to help you answer clinical questions like these. Standards is a veterinary clinical support tool that brings expert-backed guidance, calculations, and monitoring recommendations into one place, so you don’t have to piece the plan together from several different references.
In a recent webinar, Rachel Halpin, DVM, DACVECC, and Tracy Walters, DVM, used Standards to work through three very different hypernatremia cases: a Yorkie with vomiting and diarrhea, a kitten with a history of head trauma, and a Doodle that ate homemade play dough.
Want a closer look at Standards? Explore a free demo to see how Standards can help you move from clinical questions to clear next steps.
What You’ll See in the Webinar
The same high sodium can point you in very different directions depending on the patient, the history, and how quickly the problem developed.
- Ruby, a 12-year-old Yorkie with vomiting, diarrhea, and dehydration
- Miso, an 8-week-old kitten with a history of head trauma and marked PU/PD, where the timeline changes how you think about correction
- Luna, a 2-year-old Doodle with a known recent play-dough ingestion and an acute sodium load
As the cases unfold, Drs. Halpin and Walters use the hypernatremia clinical monograph in Standards to work through possible causes, treatment considerations, and monitoring. You’ll see how details like volume status, urine concentration, and the clinical timeline change the approach from one patient to the next.
Like all Standards clinical monographs, it’s written by a veterinary specialist, peer reviewed, and distills the literature into practical diagnostic and treatment guidance.
See how Standards supports another high-pressure clinical scenario. Read Clinical Decision Support for Dyspnea Cases: See Standards in Action.
See How the Fluid Plan Comes Together
The webinar also gets into the part of hypernatremia management that can quickly get complicated: turning the clinical plan into actual fluid orders.
Drs. Halpin and Walters work through the questions that come with that, including fluid selection, correction rate, dehydration and maintenance needs, and free water deficit. Standards keeps that guidance together and includes a free water deficit calculator, so you can work through patient-specific numbers without tracking down a separate formula or tool.
And because the plan doesn’t stop once fluids are running, the clinical monograph in Standards also includes monitoring and follow-up guidance to help you reassess as the sodium changes.
Watch the Full Case Walkthrough
The sodium value is only the starting point. The full webinar shows how Drs. Halpin and Walters adjust their approach as the cause becomes clearer, the sodium changes, and each patient responds to treatment.
