A retrospective manual analysis of charts of consecutive patients, who were referred to the Department of Pain and
Palliative Medicine, St. John’s Medical College Hospital,Bengaluru for a total of 5 years, was carried out. All
patients whose sodium levels were below 135 mEq/L were included in the analysis. Inferential statistics for the result
was calculated using the Z-test. Statistical package SPSS 16 (IBM SPSS statistics) was used for analysis of data.