Background: Chronic heart failure is one of the most common reasons for hospital admissions in the United States. There have been several approaches for treating heart failure but loop diuretics has been at the forefront to alleviate the symptoms. Loop diuretics have their own side effects as with any medication use, and a lesser known and monitored one is metabolic alkalosis. Case report: The patient was a 76-year-old female with past medical history of diabetes, hypertension, chronic kidney disease, dyslipidemia and chronic heart failure who came to the hospital with progressive shortness of breath for the past few days and was started on aggressive diuresis with intravenous loop diuretics and well responded. On the morning of d 6 of her admission, she was kept on the lfoor and started on BIPAP to correct hypercarbia and respiratory acidosis due to metabolic alkalosis and back to baseline with normal mentation by the middle of the day. Conclusion: Hypokalemia due to the diuretic effect can cause alkalosis by resulting in the shift of hydrogen ions intracellularly, stimulating the apical H+/K+ ATPase in the collecting duct, stimulating renal ammonia genesis, reabsorption, and secretion, leading to impaired chloride ion reabsorption in the distal nephron and reducing the glomerular ifltration rate (GFR). The patient improved after being started on oxygen therapy and switched to acetazolamide as an alternative diuretic, indicating that acetazolamide corrects the effect of metabolic alkalosis by causing metabolic acidosis due to decrease reclamation of bicarbonate at the level of proximal convoluted tubule.
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