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Psychotropics and hyponatraemia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
Extract
Hyponatraemia is usually defined as a serum sodium concentration below 135 mmol/1. The condition is rarely symptomatic until serum sodium falls below 120 mmol/1 and symptoms are more usually associated with values around 110 mmol/1. These symptoms include confusion and restlessness, progressing to drowsiness, myoclonic jerks, generalised convulsions and eventually coma. In a general hospital population about 1% of patients develop hyponatraemia (Rutsky, 1992), whereas in psychiatric patients the prevalence has been reported to range from 3.3% to 12.2% (Ohsawa et al, 1992).
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- Drug Information Quarterly
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- This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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- Copyright © 1997 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
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