Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Tests and diagnosis
By Mayo Clinic staffYour doctor can often diagnose dehydration on the basis of physical signs and symptoms such as little or no urination, sunken eyes, and skin that lacks its normal elasticity and resilience when pinched. If you're dehydrated, you're also likely to have low blood pressure, especially when moving from a prone to a standing position, a faster than normal heart rate and reduced blood flow to your extremities.
To help confirm the diagnosis and pinpoint the degree of dehydration, you may have other tests, such as:
- Blood tests. These may be used to check your electrolytes, especially sodium and potassium; to look for signs of concentrated blood; and to evaluate how well your kidneys are working.
- Urinalysis. The color and clarity of your urine, the presence of carbon compounds (ketones) and your urine's specific gravity — that is, the mass of the urine as compared with equal amounts of distilled water — all help show whether you're dehydrated and to what degree. A high specific gravity, for example, indicates significant dehydration.
If it's not obvious why you're dehydrated, your doctor may order additional tests to check for diabetes and for liver or kidney problems.
- Dehydration. The Merck Manuals Online Medical Library: The Merck Manual for Patients and Caregivers.
- http://www.merck.com/mmhe/sec12/ch158/ch158b.html. Accessed Oct. 25, 2008.
- Wanke CA. Acute diarrhea in adults.
- http://www.uptodate.com/patients/content/topic.do?topicKey=inf_immu/8950. Accessed Oct. 25, 2008.
- Dehydration and fluid maintenance. National Guidelines Clearinghouse.
- http://www.guideline.gov/summary/summary.aspx?doc_id=3305. Accessed Oct. 25, 2008.
- Vomiting and diarrhea in children. American Academy of Family Physicians.
- http://familydoctor.org/online/famdocen/home/children/parents/common/stomach/196.html. Accessed Oct. 25, 2008.
- Fleisher GR. Acute diarrhea in children.
- http://www.uptodate.com/patients/content/topic.do?topicKey=~eeVWYOJxLfOU3e. Accessed Oct. 25, 2008.
- Diarrhea. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases
- http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/pubs/diarrhea. Accessed Oct. 25, 2008.
- Preventing dehydration from diarrhea. Journal of the American Medical Association. 2001;285(3):362.
- Wellbery C. Diagnosing dehydration in children. American Family Physician. 2005;71(5).
