[Acid-base balance and Stewart concept : Guide to routine daily use]

In 1981 the Canadian Peter Stewart presented a new concept for the interpretation of the acid-base balance. Rehm et al. published the first German language article on this topic. In 2007 the works of Deetjen and Lichtwarck-Aschoff as well as Funk presented both the physiological and clinical foundations of the Stewart concept as well as algorithms to interpret the acid-base status more precisely. Furthermore, since 2004 many other publications on the Stewart concept have been published, which have sometimes been controversially discussed and has not yet found its way into the everyday interpretation of blood gas analysis. This gap is intended to be filled by this work. It introduces a simple, practical algorithm and provides an approach to understanding the acid-base balance and the Stewart concept, which assumes that the plasma ions determine the pH value and the base excess (BE) in the plasma.