Conductivity measures coupled with treatment with ion-exchange resin for the assessment of sodium concentration in physiological fluids: analyses on artificial solutions

In humans, sodium is essential for the regulation of blood volume and pressure. During hemodialysis, sodium measurement is important to preserve the patient from hypo- or hyper-natremia Usually, sodium measurement is performed through laboratory equipment which is typically expensive, and requires manual intervention. We propose a new method, based on conductivity measurement after treatment of dialysate solution through ion-exchange resin. To test this method, we performed in vitro experiments. We prepared 40 ml sodium chloride (NaCl) samples at 280, 140, 70, 35, 17.5, 8.75, 4.375 mEq/l, and some mixed samples, i.e., with added potassium chloride (KCl) at different concentrations (4.375–17.5 mEq/l), to simulate the confounding factors in a conductivity-based sodium measurement. We measured the conductivity of all samples. Afterwards, each sample was treated for 1 min with 1 g of Dowex G-26 resin, and conductivity measured again. On average, the difference e in the conductivity between mixed samples and corresponding pure NaCl samples (at the same NaCl concentration) was 20.9%. With treatment with the resin, it was 9.9%, only. We conclude that ion-exchange resin treatment coupled with conductivity measures may be a possible simple approach for continuous and automatic sodium measurement during hemodialysis.