Originally Posted by miamijim
nnewton, I talked to one of the cardiac surgeons I work with about about dehydration and high Hct. The amount of intravascular volume you need to lose in order to significantly raise a Hct. is astronomical. Hct. may increae by .01 or so but not much more than that.
A 70 KG person with a Hct. of UCI legal .49 needs to lose more than 200CC of INTRAVASCULAR/BLOOD VOLUME to raise thier Hct. to a UCI illegal .51. It may not sound like much but 200cc intravascular is alot of volume.
I beg to differ. The most common cause of an elevated hemoglobin/hematocrit is dehydration, It is well documented. Also, people with large muscle mass sometimes have slightly elevated creatinines and it is normal for them. With the BUN also slightly elevate I would have to go with dehydration rather than Kidney disease. Potassium is very tightly regulated by the body. You usually don't see abnormal potassium levels unless the patient is really ill. One of the main causes for low potassium is taking diuretics.