Anatomy & Physiology › Section X · Fluid, electrolyte, and acid-base balance › Topic X.4
Acid-base balance and its disorders
Metabolism produces acid all day, yet arterial blood stays within a few hundredths of pH 7.4. This topic shows how buffers, the lungs and the kidneys share that work, how to calculate blood pH from two measurements, and how to read the four basic acid-base disorders.
In this topic
- A narrow range under constant pressure
- Buffer systems
- The bicarbonate buffer
- Calculating pH: the Henderson-Hasselbalch equation
- Worked example: normal blood pH
- The lungs: fast control of CO₂
- The kidneys: slow but decisive
- The four primary disorders
- Compensation
- Worked example: reading a blood gas
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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