Assessing Acid-Base Imbalances Through Laboratory Parameters

Abstract

The problem is to differentiate the acute from the chronic, the respiratory from the metabolic, and the pure from the mixed acid-base disorder. Appreciation of the interdependence of hydrogen ion concentration, serum bicarbonate, and pCO₂, expressible in a simple equation, facilitates the task. In most patients with a pure disorder, a change in one parameter will result in a distinctive and proportionate change in another.