While researching for this blog entry, I came across this website: http://www.uninet.edu/cin2003/conf/tattersall/tattersall.html Figure 1 (just below the fold) is quite interesting. It seems to suggest that as a dialysis patient in the 35 - 39 age group, my life expectancy is less than 10 years on dialysis. Compare that to the rest of the US population in my age group with a life expectancy of 40 years.
8:56 AM
When my kidneys were originally failing way back in 2000, I was trying to understand why I needed to get a transplant. He explained it something like this (paraphrasing, because my memory stinks): your creatinine is 10.3, your kidneys are not cleaning your blood effectively, the wastes that are building up in your bloodstream will damage your internal organs.So, when a simple change to my dialysis routine sent me to the hospital, I reviewed my chart at Davita. My Kt/V was in the good or adequate range (i forget their actual terminology), which as far as Davita and Dr. Goel (the Nephrologist I fired) were concerned that was good enough. What's Kt/V? Wikipedia says, "Kt/V is a dimensionless number used to quantify hemodialysis efficiency". Where V is the volume of water in the body. T is the time dialyzed and K is the dialyzer clearance of Urea. So, what I can't understand is how we can say I'm adequately dialyzed, when my Creatinine is around 14...I'm not a nephrologist, but I'm pretty sure that's in the range that would damage my internal organs. My new nephrologist and I discussed this briefly and he recommended that we extend my dialysis from 3.5 hours to 4 hours. After seeing my creatinine at 14, I agreed.
"Kt/V"
1 Comment -
While researching for this blog entry, I came across this website:
http://www.uninet.edu/cin2003/conf/tattersall/tattersall.html
Figure 1 (just below the fold) is quite interesting. It seems to suggest that as a dialysis patient in the 35 - 39 age group, my life expectancy is less than 10 years on dialysis. Compare that to the rest of the US population in my age group with a life expectancy of 40 years.
8:56 AM