How Do You Treat Severe Hypokalemia?

When we see a low potassium we really have to think about the whole clinical context how the patients presenting their whole history and their acid-based status. And some of the initial studies that could be helpful depending on how they're presenting are urine electrolytes as well as urine pH. Yeah and I would also say that if you have the metabolic acidosis present to also take a look at the urine potassium. That's right. Moving on to treatment sounds like it really depends on what the underlying cause of the hypokalemia is but just to start off when we have a patient like this in the emergency room and we know that she needs potassium urgently how would we think about repleting potassium