The Medical Media Review

Category: Laboratory Medicine

  • How to Use LDH in Clinical Decision-Making

    Introduction Lactate dehydrogenase, or LDH, is a marker of cell breakdown almost anywhere in the body, most notably red blood cells, liver, lungs, heart, brain, and kidneys. Thus, a negative LDH is an extremely useful test result because it tells you that all sorts of things are not going on with your patient. An elevated LDH is also a useful and…

  • Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation (DIC)

    Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation (DIC)

    Introduction Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation (DIC) is a very serious and life-threatining coagulation cascade disorder that is sometimes seen in patients with severe physiologic stressors such as sepsis, obstetric complications (for example, placental abruption, retained products of conception, or amniotic fluid embolization) or major tissue injury from trauma, burns, shock, snake bites, or malignancy (for example, acute promyelocytic leukemia).…

  • How to Spot a Falsely Normal Anion Gap

    Introduction A high anion gap metabolic acidosis can be a very dangerous acid-base abnormality. The “gap” itself is just a number – it isn’t harmful per se. Rather, the danger is from the acidosis and from the process that is generating the abnormal and excessive organic acid load. The most common screening test for high anion gap…

  • Hypermineralocorticoidism Explained

    Introduction Aldosterone is the most important mineralocorticoid in the human body, although various other hormones, such as cortisol, display mineralocorticoid activity as well, namely they cause hypertension, hypokalemia, and chloride resistant metabolic alkalosis (urine chloride > 20). In addition, mineralocorticoids can also cause hypernatremia and hypervolemia. The triad of hypertension, and hypokalemia and chloride resistant metabolic alkalosis should…

  • Acid-Base Abnormalities and Their Causes

    Introduction Acid-Base pathophysiology plays an important role in every aspect of medical practice, including psychiatry. Doctors and medical students need to know, both for real life and for examinations, the predicted acid base disorder of various diseases. It is much easier to interpret ABGs when you know ahead of time what to expect: So let’s start…

  • Book Review: Clinician’s Guide to Laboratory Medicine: Pocket

    Book Review: Clinician’s Guide to Laboratory Medicine: Pocket

    Clinician’s Guide to Laboratory Medicine: Pocket (2009) by Samir P. Desai MD is an excellent handbook about the use laboratory studies in clinical medicine. Almost every laboratory abnormality contains an extensive differential diagnosis, along with an intelligent and efficient approach to further workup and diagnosis. It contains dozens of useful charts, algorithms and tables. The hematology and…