[popsune]

I was given a drip of potassium before my operation for my spinal cord. Does anyone knows what is the use of potassium?

[kdenon01]

Not sure, but my husbands potassium is ALWAYS low. They always freak out.

[Trinity]

You may well have been given potassium because you were either not allowed to eat before your surgery or your levels were low, or both. Potassium is vital in the body, amongst other things is vital preventing your heart beating in an abnormal rhythm. Potassium is also vital along with sodium in controlling the fluid balance in the body, muscles and the nervous system require potassium to function correctly.

I suspect the doctors were aiming to prevent cardiac arrhythmias which may have been detrimental or even fatal if they occur intra or post operatively. You should normally be able to get enough potassium from your diet unless you are on diuretics which may mean more potassium is excreted. Supplements should generally be avoided in people with renal failure though as if potassium levels build up to a dangerous level then this can also lead to problems with the heart rhythm

[popsune]

 trinity, on Dec 15 2008, 01:04 AM, said:

You may well have been given potassium because you were either not allowed to eat before your surgery or your levels were low, or both. Potassium is vital in the body, amongst other things is vital preventing your heart beating in an abnormal rhythm. Potassium is also vital along with sodium in controlling the fluid balance in the body, muscles and the nervous system require potassium to function correctly.

I suspect the doctors were aiming to prevent cardiac arrhythmias which may have been detrimental or even fatal if they occur intra or post operatively. You should normally be able to get enough potassium from your diet unless you are on diuretics which may mean more potassium is excreted. Supplements should generally be avoided in people with renal failure though as if potassium levels build up to a dangerous level then this can also lead to problems with the heart rhythm

Thanks, are laxatives such as sennoside, lactolose and ducolax considered as duretics and will induce the loss of potassium?

Why is there a possibility of cardiac arrhythmias occuring post or intra op?

This post has been edited by popsune: 14 December 2008 - 05:24 PM

[Trinity]

Laxatives on there own should not cause a loss of potassium but diarrhoea will.

As for anaesthetic agents, without getting into pharmokinetics too much most if not all anaesthetic drugs have an effect on the repolarisation of the heart which can lead to a prolongation of the Q-T interval, this is the time it takes the ventricles to replolarise during the cardiac cycle and is measured in milliseconds. If the Q-T interval is prolonged then it can make the heart susceptible to ventricular arrhythmias, such as ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation.

The volatile anaesthetic gases (the gas you breath during surgery to make you unconscious) disrupts the calcium and potassium channels in the heart and may also make the heart beat with less force. All anaesthetics have the potential to cause a low heart rate due to the suppression of the autonomic nervous system,

Like most things in medicine, prevention is better than cure so giving someone iv fluids containing potassium pre-op is generally a good idea especially if their potassium is low or borderline or they are being starved for any period of time and are not able to get their potassium from their diet. The chances are that the fluid would also contain glucose t help give the body cells energy during this period of starvation,