Fluids and Electrolytes: a Thorough Guide Covering Fluids, Electrolytes and Acid-Base Balance of the Human Body

Fluids, Electrolytes, and Acid Base Balance Made Clear

Finally understand the topic students find most confusing, including the lab values for nurses that make it usable at the bedside.

Fluid and electrolyte balance sits at the center of patient care. Every patient admitted to intensive care is screened for these imbalances, because when sodium, potassium, calcium, or acid-base levels drift out of range, the effects are immediate and serious.

This book takes a subject most students memorize but rarely understand and rebuilds it as one framework: how fluids, electrolytes, and the acid base system are regulated, why they move together, how to read the labs, and what to do next.

What you get

• One system instead of isolated lists. Why a shift in one electrolyte almost always disturbs the others, and how acidosis and alkalosis drive fluid and electrolyte imbalances.
• Lab values you can actually use. Normal serum ranges for the major electrolytes, plus ABG interpretation and the anion gap so a high or low result means something, not just a number to memorize.
• Every major fluid and electrolyte imbalance, bedside ready. Fluid volume excess and deficit, dehydration, hyponatremia, hyperkalemia, and disorders of calcium, magnesium, phosphate, and chloride: signs and symptoms, why it happened, and the first management step.
• When several things break at once. A closing chapter on the common medical conditions that produce life threatening combined imbalances: heart failure, renal failure, respiratory failure, GI losses, burns, and heat stroke.
• Built for exams and rounds. A study guide layer at the end of each chapter: summaries for a fast review before a quiz, HESI, NCLEX style content, or the floor, plus practice questions so you can test recall and confirm it stuck.

Authored by M. Mastenbörk, M.D., and S. Meloni, M.D., for nursing students, medical students, PA students, NP and LPN students, and clinicians who want physiology to bedside command of fluids, electrolytes, and acid base balance, including medical surgical and ICU care.

Read the labs with confidence, spot the imbalance, and know exactly what to do next. Get the book, then keep it next to our Lab Values title. That one covers the full lab panel: what to order, the range, and what a high or low result usually means.

This book is a deep dive on fluids, electrolytes, and acid base, so you can connect those numbers to the physiology and the bedside plan.