 Welcome to Nursing School Explained in this video on potassium sparing diuretics. Like most diuretics, the potassium sparing diuretics end in the ending ID or IDE. A very commonly used example is a milleride. The only exception here to the potassium sparing diuretics is spironolactone which is a little bit special and as you can see it does not end in ID but in tone. I would remember spironolactone or the other name for it is aldactone so the tone ones are potassium sparing diuretics and as the name already tells us it spares the potassium from being excreted but it still diuresis the patient like other diuretics do. So for mechanism of action potassium sparing diuretics inhibit the sodium and water reabsorption while saving potassium as well as hydrogen ion at the kidney in the exchange. Remember that the kidney is in charge of the fluid and electrolyte balance and it always tries to balance the pH by excreting positively and negatively charged ions so that we can maintain the pH balance. Well in this case these particular groups are saving the potassium as their name already says and therefore the indication is to counteract potassium loss of other diuretics because all other diuretics are potassium wasting and that would be thiazide as well as loop diuretics. And the other indication is in use when there's edema present so in order to diurese the patient but maintain some of the potassium and then the special diuretic that I mentioned earlier spironolactone is used in the treatment for primary hyperaldosteronism and you can see in a different video what that disease is and why spironolactone here is so effective. Now side effects if we're sparing the potassium if we're saving or conserving the potassium in the body we run the risk of hyperkalemia and so this is the only diuretic group that has a risk for hyperkalemia rather than hypokalemia and again whenever we rid the body of excess fluids the patient might be dizzy and drowsy and maybe have some orthostatic hypotension and then potassium sparing diuretics are also at risk for developing Steven Johnson syndrome which is a pretty significant rash the patient can develop so I recommend that you type that in your search engine and see what that looks like so that you can be familiar with this possible side effect as for contraindications for potassium sparing diuretics so patients with hyperkalemia we don't want to give them these medications because then their potassium will be even higher and might put them at risk for cardiac dysrhythmias and all those bad things that can happen with elevated potassium levels also with renal insufficiency which is related to hyperkalemia because we know if the kidneys are not working properly such as in chronic kidney insufficiency or chronic kidney disease the patients tend to retain more potassium and then we don't want to give them this medication on top of it to even make the potassium level higher and it's also contraindicated in pregnancy lactation and pediatric patients so keep that in mind as for nursing considerations we always want to check the blood pressure when we're dealing with edema and medications that diures the patients we want to check the patient's intake and output on daily weight because of the edema that we might be treating here and we always want to check an EKG or have the patient on telemetry because of the risk for hyperkalemia and the associated complications as always for labs anything that affects the kidney we want to check kidney and liver function as well as their electrolytes and specifically here again their potassium and then we want to be aware of any skin signs that might develop because we have this risk for the Stephen Johnson syndrome here and then one other thing that really applies to all of the diuretics is if the patient is on the dioxin which is a cardiac glycoside that's mostly treated or used in the treatment for a heart failure potassium imbalances can make the patient the dioxin toxic so we always have to make sure if the patient is on the dioxin and on any kind of diuretic that we check the patients the dioxin as well as potassium levels to make sure that they are in balance and that their dioxin level is normal otherwise they can have significant side effects from the dioxin toxicity and you can also watch that in my other videos that's titled cardiac medications where the dioxin is listed please also watch my other two videos about loop as well as thiazide diuretics here in the cardiology pharmacology playlist and give me a thumbs up if you enjoyed the video please always comment if you have any questions or any suggestions for me and also follow me on Instagram for study tips and the announcements of the latest videos thanks so much for watching see you soon