Two clients with polydipsia and polyuria arrived at the hospital. Both were having similar symptoms but were diagnosed with different types of diabetes insipidus. Which assessment finding helped to differentiate the diagnosis?
a. urine outputb. specific gravityc. urine osmolarityd. serum osmolarity

The correct answer is c. urine osmolarity

Explanation:

Diabetes insipidus is a condition frequently associated with neurosurgical pathology and may be the form of presentation of a variety of tumors of the central nervous system in childhood. The diagnosis of diabetes insipidus is clinical and paraclinical. The clinic is based on the cardinal symptoms and signs: polyuria and polydipsia. At the paraclinical level it is essential to measure density, urinary osmolarity and plasma osmolarity. Urinary osmolarity is the concentration of active osmotic solutes in urine, in other words, it is a laboratory study that is indicated to know the concentration of urine with greater precision than that obtained through urinary density, since it does not measure only the solutes but the amount of molecules per liter of urine.