The lungs in dialysis patients are liable to suffer from any disturbance in water and electrolyte balance. The difficulty in breathing is due to anatomical and physiological changes that happen without any signs and symptoms especially blocking of pulmonary vessels and small bronchi due to calcification is very common and is highly asymptomatic. To diagnose this, Pulmonary Function tests to be done to check vital capacity, defect in gas transfer and severity of lung calcification in dialysis patients regularly is highly recommended.
Tag: Complications
Dialysis during Viral Outbreak
Severe infectious diseases like Coronaviruses (CoV), Ebola, etc are said to be public health emergencies and the outbreak of these diseases ends in tragically disruptive events. The prevalence of viral outbreaks among patients treated in hemodialysis facilities is five times higher than among the general population and predisposes the patients to serious consequences. One of the major reasons for the viral outbreak is inappropriate risk management. And the outbreaks are exacerbated when seen along with natural disasters, power outages, and civil disturbance. In the middle of the widespread of infectious diseases, Health Care Workers (HCW’s) experience a huge amount of contact with the patients and thus subject to substantial risks, these risks increase with shortage of HCW’s at the period of outbreak and become worse with lack of supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) and basic reserves such as power and water.
Carbon Dioxide Removal by Dialysis
A dialysis patient is said to be an acid accumulator for about 44 hrs (Interdialytic period) followed by 4 hrs effective period of retitration (Intradialytic period) which can be accompanied by various degrees of hypoxemia (decreased oxygen in the blood). Hypoxemia occurs because during dialysis Co2 tends to diffuse across the dialyser membrane resulting in decreased Co2 concentration in the blood (pCo2) causing hypoventilation (slow breathing rate) in dialysis patients.
Intraosseous Access For Hemodialysis
Intraosseous Access is said to be vascular access obtained from the bone which functions similar to the Intravenous access because the bone marrow of long bone contains veins that ultimately drain into the vena cava and this access is said to be a non-collapsible venous access route and considered as a standard alternative to peripheral intravenous access.
Difficult Cannulation Made Easy
The majority of AVF created does not meet the "Rule of 6s" which makes it difficult to cannulate. And many AVF have prominent bruit and thrill but veins are present deep which makes it difficult to find the vein and cannulate which if not done properly might lead to access-related complications. Because of these reasons the patient has to go back for Central Venous Catheter (CVC) or Arteriovenous Graft (AVG) as their vascular access which is higher in cost and less preferred for maintenance hemodialysis due to its high complication rate compared with AVF. To avoid patients settling with CVC/AVG there are many techniques and procedure which helps make difficult cannulation easy.
Complications Of Dialysis
From 7 decades we are treating renal failure patients with dialysis and we came across many complications of this procedure. In this post, we go through a few of the common complications of dialysis, how to avoid and treat these complications and improve the quality of life on dialysis.
LazyKidney 