Fixed Urine Specific Gravity (Nursing)

00:00 Now let's say you get a lab value back, and you look at the urine analysis and you see the fixed specific gravity is 1.010.

00:08 Woohoo, that's within normal range.

00:11 But what do we always talk about? One value does not a diagnosis make, it's always about trends.

00:19 So with that first value, I really couldn't figure out for sure what's going on with my patient.

00:24 But what if I looked at a trend of values and I noticed that no matter what my patient's fluid volume intake was, that urine specific gravity stayed the same or fixed.

00:37 That's what fixed specific gravity is.

00:39 It is an ominous sign.

00:41 It means you have severe renal damage and failure.

00:46 But it's within a normal value.

00:48 I know.

00:49 But if it remains unchanged, we've got a problem.

00:54 What's the kidneys job? It's supposed to receive the blood, filter it through its organ, right.

01:00 And decide what it wants to remove and put back into the blood and what else they send out into the urine.

01:09 If what's entering the kidney is moving all the way through the kidney, and leaving unchanged, that's a sign of severe renal damage and failure.

01:17 That's why fixed specific gravity even if the reference is within a normal range, if it doesn't change, when the patient's fluid intake, they've taken in less, they've taken in more so there's a change in their fluid intake and it stays exactly the same, we have to do some further assessment to determine the damage to the kidney.