Nutritional Problems in Continuous Ambulatory Peritoneal Dialysis

Abstract

There are difficulties in ohtaining trustworthy information about nutritional status. Methods of assessment must be very specific and sensitive. Today's traditional anthropometric and biochemical standards should be re-evaluated. Reliability of plasma proteins as indicators of protein status is suspect. There is need to review contents of food composition tables used in computing nutrients in diets. Diet therapy for uremic patients using CAPD has similar problems encountered by pioneers who originated total parenteral nutrition.Patients in chronic renal failure who use continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis may have a number of nutritional and metabolic problems: glucose intolerance, loss of amino acids in dialysate leading to possible protein depletion, decreased energy intake, hypertriglyceridemia, astro dystrophy, anemia, anorexia, hypocalemia, nausea, constipation. Nephrologists, like other clinicians and researchers who have accepted nutritional care as a required therapy for rehabilitation or management of sick people, have adopted some generally accepted methodologies for assessment of the nutritional status of these individuals. They include diet assessment, biochemical indices, anthropometric measurements and more elegant documentation of body composition.