Talk:Anion gap

Untitled
The external links appear to be advertisements for reference books. Should they be removed, or listed instead as references? Poslfit 18:24, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Mnemonics
I have removed this text:

The mnemonic "MUDPILES" is used to remember the causes of a high anion gap.

M - methanol/metformin

U - uremia

D - diabetic ketoacidosis

P - paraldehyde/propylene glycol

I - Infection/ischemia/isoniazid

L - lactate

E - ethylene glycol/ethanol

S - salicylates/starvation

Some people, especially those not in the emergency room, find the mnemonic KIL-U easier to remember and also more useful clinically:

K - Ketones

I - Ingestion

L - lactic acid

U - uremia

All of the components of "mudpiles" are also covered with the "KIL-U" device, with the bonus that these are things that can kill you.

Ketones: more straightforward than remembering diabetic ketosis and starvation ketosis, etc.

Ingestion: methanol, metformin, paraldehyde, propylene glycol, isoniazid, ethylene glycol, ethanol, and salicilates are covered by ingestion. These can be thought of as a single group: "ingestions" during the initial consideration, especially when not triaging a patient in the emergency room.

Lactate: including that caused by infection and shock

Another good way of remembering is the acronym "KUSSMAUL"(also reminder of the typical breathing of acidotic patients)

"K" Ketosis (DKA)

"U" Uremia

"SS" Salicylate poisoning

"M" Methanol Poisoning

"A" Ethylene poisoning (previously spelt Aethylene)

"U" Uremia

"L" Lactic Acidosis

because we generally try to avoid the inclusion of mnemonic devices in medicine-related articles, particularly when the mnemonic itself is not independently notable. Wikipedia is written for the average reader, not for medical students. If there is any individual piece of information that is important to the article, then please extract it from the mnemonic section here and add it back to the article in some more organized fashion. Thanks, WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:27, 14 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I like the inclusion of mnemonics on Wikipedia pages. Anyone curious as to what an Anion Gap is, might also be curious as to the things that can cause it, as well as a device to remember those things, be that person a medical professional or not.Dryphi (talk) 03:09, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Normal Value Ranges
In the Normal Value Ranges subtopic, it should indicate whether or not those values include potassium in the calculation.Dryphi (talk) 03:11, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

High Gap Causes
Many of these substances, such as Iron, Isoniazid, Urea, etc are not necessarily "toxins". For that matter, anything, even water, can be toxic if ingested in high enough quantities. Perhaps we could organize this instead by "ingested substances" and "metabolic abnormalities" or something of that nature? Dryphi (talk) 03:26, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Pathology
Situations about measurement of anion gap in special events should be added. I may refer to hyperuricemia and hypercreatininemia amongst others. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Charlieinfra (talk • contribs) 11:29, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Understandable to non-experts?
I've tried to make some edits that I hope will make the article more "understandable to non-experts." However, I would guess that no one thinks their own writing is too technical, so I left the Template:Technical in place. If other editors decide that it's no longer an issue, they may want to remove it.

LiberalArtist (talk) 00:21, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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