Treatment
- Glucose or other carbohydrates can be given during an attack and may reduce the severity.
- Intravenous calcium decreases activity of sodium channels. It may stop sudden attacks.
- Diuretics such as furosemide may be needed to stop sudden attacks. acetazolamide and thiazide diuretics such as chlorothiazide are also effective.
- Intravenous glucose and insulin stimulates potassium uptake into the cell by the Na-K ATPase and may reduce weakness without a loss of total body potassium.
- A high-carbohydrate diet may be recommended.
- Avoidance of other known attack triggers.
Read more about this topic: Hyperkalemic Periodic Paralysis
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“To me, nothing can be more important than giving children books, It’s better to be giving books to children than drug treatment to them when they’re 15 years old. Did it ever occur to anyone that if you put nice libraries in public schools you wouldn’t have to put them in prisons?”
—Fran Lebowitz (20th century)
“Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“If the study of all these sciences, which we have enumerated, should ever bring us to their mutual association and relationship, and teach us the nature of the ties which bind them together, I believe that the diligent treatment of them will forward the objects which we have in view, and that the labor, which otherwise would be fruitless, will be well bestowed.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)