 What comes at her sink school explainer this video on blood urea nitrogen are also BUN as we many times refer to it. This is a common lab test that we see in the clinical setting and so to really understand what it means and what we're really assessing let's take a look at this video here. So the reference range typically is 10 to 30 milligrams per deciliter but it all depends on whatever lab reference range you're working with so make sure that you check the reference range from the particular lab that you're sending or that is processing the blood work from the patient. So blood urea nitrogen so urea is formed in the liver from ammonia and then excreted by the kidneys because it is a byproduct of end product of protein metabolism. So as protein is being broken down it is a byproduct and then the kidneys get rid of it out in our system and so therefore when we measure BUN we can measure how well the kidneys are functioning by seeing how well they're excreting the urea. It's always used in combination with creatinine to diagnose the following two any kind of renal disorder because we know the kidneys excreted and dehydration or fluid volume status. And here in red is a very important tidbit so if the patient has a normal creatinine and an increased BUN that means that they're most likely dehydrated or also have what's called fluid volume deficit. But if the creatinine and the BUN are both increased that means that there's some sort of underlying renal disorder and please check out my other video where I go more in detail as to what creatinine measures. So BUN is usually checked when we want to know about the patient's fluid volume status or did they hydrate it. The effects of dialysis because people with patients with dialysis typically have fluid volume excess so they have too much fluid in their system. We want to evaluate renal function for any kind of renal disorders from acute to chronic and then we also can monitor or want to monitor nephrotoxic drugs and the effects they might be having on the kidney. So we want to check BUN before and during the administration of these medications. Please also check out the other videos that go over fluid volume status specifically fluid volume deficit and fluid volume excess and then also the other videos in my laboratory value playlist today you can kind of get a better understanding of how they all relate to one another and what we're really checking. Thanks for watching. See you soon.