Basic Concepts of Fluid and Electrolyte Therapy

Foreword
This book, ‘Basic Concepts of Fluid and Electrolyte Therapy’, fills a long
felt need for an up to date pocket guide to the subject. Water and
electrolyte balance is crucial for body homeostasis and is one of the
most protected physiological mechanisms in the body. While we can
survive for months without food, without water intake we die very
quickly. Similarly the body has very strong mechanisms to control salt
and water balance, an understanding of which has major implications
in clinical practice.
Despite salt and water balance being so fundamental for homeostatic
control, knowledge and practice of fluid and electrolyte therapy has
been shown to be appallingly poor among many health care professionals.
The results of such knowledge surveys have been reported by
the authors and were surely the reason why they felt the urge to write
this book.
Dileep Lobo, Andrew Lewington and Simon Allison are all well
renowned experts in this field covering different aspects of the topic:
surgery, renal medicine and clinical nutrition. This allows for a broad
approach to the concepts of fluid and electrolyte management and
gives the book sufficient depth to fulfil the basic needs of all medical
specialties.
The book covers the basics in physiology and pathophysiology, how to
assess fluid and electrolyte status, a clear overview of fluids used in
clinical practice and how to prescribe them, and then moves on to
describe and discuss some of the most common clinical problems.
The book is rich in tables and figures that help the reader grasp the
fundamentals, both physiological and pathophysiological. It contains
examples of how to address clinical situations and to monitor treatment,
often with the help of simple cartoons and figures. The authors
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