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In their article "New Guidelines for Potassium Replacement in Clinical Practice,"¹ Jay N. Cohn et al state that "increasing potassium intake should be considered when serum potassium levels are between 3.5 and 4.0 mmol/L." Although they correctly state that a level lower than 3.6 mmol/L is not necessarily synonymous with whole-body potassium deficiency, no mention is made of the value of other findings that could lend credibility to a low value of serum potassium concentration. Such laboratory validation includes a low specific gravity of the urine, alkaline urine, metabolic alkalosis, and electrocardiographic findings of decreased T and prominent U waves.²

It is not infrequent to have low serum values of potassium concentration replaced by higher values by laboratory repetition of the chemical determination owing, of course, to standard deviation or artifact or compartment shift.^3-4 On the other hand, administration of potassium in the absence of deficiency is unpleasant, costly, and . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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