The Hydration Status Assessment Tool

Hydration status assessment, i.e. identifying whether a patient needs fluid or has too much, is one of the greatest challenges in medicine, affecting both hospitalized and ambulatory patients. Particularly in patients with heart, liver or kidney failure, therapeutic decisions and recover depend strongly on the right hydration assessment. Misjudgments may result in giving fluids to patients who do not need them or removing fluids from those who do, both of which can lead to severe complications for the patient. Accurate hydration assessment is therefore essential for guiding therapy and avoiding iatrogenic harm. However, to date, no reliable non-invasive diagnostic tool exists. Clinical evaluation remains the reference standard, even though its accuracy is limited. Many laboratory tests exist, yet all with limited application field. Over recent decades, ultrasound (US) has been investigated as a non-invasive, radiation free tool for hydration assessment, however, its diagnostic performance is impaired by a lack of standardized protocols and high operator dependency.

This project aims to put the basis for a reliable tool to guide everyday therapeutic decisions by integrating validated clinical, laboratory and US assessments. It is organized in many interconnected subprojects, designed to systematically advance hydration status assessment 

Current projects

1. Recruitment completed, manuscript under review: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT06706960
2. Pilot phase completed: https://trialsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13063-025-08925-4