You are a third-year medical student, alone in the hospital emergency room. It is a quiet night and the residents are getting some needed sleep. A patient, Ms M.B., is brought in showing serious signs of dehydration. You try to give her water but she vomits it up. Feeling that you must try something else and not wanting to wake the residents, you administer 1 liter of sterile distilled water intravenously. For simplicity assume the RBCâs have an osmolarity of 300 mOsm/Liter and that all of the particles in the RBCâs are non-penetrating. Also assume that the infused water does not move into the extracellular compartment but stays in the circulatory system. Prior to the IV Ms M.B.s plasma volume was 3 L and her RBC volume was 2L. Please Show all of your work with your calculations.
a. Calculate Ms M.B.âs plasma osmolarity after the infusion has mixed with her plasma but before any diffusion across RBC membranes.
b. Calculate the plasma and RBC osmolarity after the infused water equilibrated between her plasma and RBCâs.
c. What would the final plasma volume and RBC volume be after the water had equilibrated?
You are a third-year medical student, alone in the hospital emergency room. It is a quiet night and the residents are getting some needed sleep. A patient, Ms M.B., is brought in showing serious signs of dehydration. You try to give her water but she vomits it up. Feeling that you must try something else and not wanting to wake the residents, you administer 1 liter of sterile distilled water intravenously. For simplicity assume the RBCâs have an osmolarity of 300 mOsm/Liter and that all of the particles in the RBCâs are non-penetrating. Also assume that the infused water does not move into the extracellular compartment but stays in the circulatory system. Prior to the IV Ms M.B.s plasma volume was 3 L and her RBC volume was 2L. Please Show all of your work with your calculations.
a. Calculate Ms M.B.âs plasma osmolarity after the infusion has mixed with her plasma but before any diffusion across RBC membranes.
b. Calculate the plasma and RBC osmolarity after the infused water equilibrated between her plasma and RBCâs.
c. What would the final plasma volume and RBC volume be after the water had equilibrated?
