Hey, all Eric Christensen pharmacist here back on the real-life pharmacology podcast.

Appreciate all the listeners that have taken the time to leave a rating and review on iTunes

and other places.

Greatly appreciated.

And if you haven't done so and you love the podcast, definitely that is appreciated.

So today we're going to cover potassium supplements.

And before you turn off the sound or go to a different podcast, I would suggest you listen to this podcast because there are definitely going to be some clinical pearls here.

And I will discuss a situation that actually led to a death of a patient as well.

So mechanistically, there's no secret sauce here, potassium supplements,

examples being Clorcon or Kedar. Those are kind of some brand names you

might hear thrown around. Potassium chloride is the commonly used potassium salt for replacement.

And like I said, mechanistically, we're just replacing the body's natural stores that you get from food and other things there.

So we're going to use potassium replacement for when we're low.

And the clinical situations where low potassium can result is a nausea and vomiting type situation,

you know, where people have poor intake,

they may not be getting adequate levels of potassium in their blood. Normal limits of potassium,

dependent upon the lab a little bit, but anywhere from 3.5 to 5.1 milo equivalent per liter.

In addition to just having low potassium, I have seen providers simply add on a potassium supplement when they start a diuretic.

So something like hydrochloratiozide or ferrosamide, those are good examples of diuretics that can lower potassium. Now keep in mind that it needs to be a potassium depleting

diuretic. So something like spiralactone, that's a potassium sparing diuretic,

and that's going to actually raise potassium levels. So I haven't ever seen that mistake before,

but just remember if we're adding on a potassium sparing diuretic, maybe we can get by with less potassium supplements.

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