Peritoneal Dialysis for the Crowd

Peritoneal dialysis is one of important substitutive therapies for the patients with End Stage Renal Failure. As it can be operated easily and does not cause much convenience to the patients’ life, it is a good choice for most of the patients, especially the following patients.

1. Diabetes

For the patients with Diabetes on peritoneal dialysis, they can directly get insulin from dialysis fluid, which is more convenient than subcutaneous injection of insulin. Therefore, it can alleviate the patients' pain greatly and also benefit the control of blood sugar. For the patients on hemodialysis, they need to build blood accesses and puncture blood vessels. However, for the patients with Diabetes, their blood vessels usually are very sclerotic, fragile. Therefore, frequent puncturing is bad to blood vessels and also is very likely to lead to infection. Moreover, the patients on hemodialysis need extracorporeal blood circulation so they need anticoagulant, which can increase the risk of fundus hemorrhage.

2. Hypertension

Hemodialysis can cause the blood pressure to fluctuate easily thus affecting on other organs. The patients with high blood pressure often have vascular sclerosis, fragile vascular wall and so on, which can increase the risk greatly. However, as peritoneal dialysis is done constantly for a long time and do not influence on blood pressure too much. Therefore, peritoneal dialysis is safer than hemodialysis.

3. Heart disease

Hemodialysis can cause blood pressure fluctuate greatly thus causing too much burden to heart. In severe cases, it can cause heart failure. Peritoneal dialysis does not need extracorporeal circulation, the heart and blood vessels can keep stable.

4. The elderly patients

The elderly patients usually have vascular sclerosis and many are also complicated with high blood pressure, heart disease and so on. Therefore, peritoneal dialysis is more suitable for the elderly patients.

5. Others

If the patients still have residual renal function and want to maintain their residual renal function, peritoneal dialysis is a better choice for them.

However, peritoneal dialysis sill has its disadvantages and may cause many complications such as peritonitis, protein loss and weight gain and so on. Therefore, if possible, the patients with Renal Failure should choose a better therapy as early as possible so as to avoid dialysis. If you or your loved ones are patient with Renal Failure and want to avoid dialysis in the later days, please consult us on line or email to kidney-treatment@hotmail.com.