The strong correlation of weekly clearances of urea and creatinine with PCR suggests that minimum targets of 50 L/week/1.73 m2 body surface area of creatinine clearance and a weekly kt/v urea of 1.7 are reasonable if protein intakes in excess of 0.8 g/kg normalized body weight are to be achieved in most CAPD patients. It would seem reasonable that this increases the chances for better nutrition. It would also seem reasonable that this should eventually improve long-term outcomes and survival in large population studies where the impact of dialysis dose could emerge as significant, even with the presence of all the other variables that are known to affect commonly monitored outcome parameters. These recommended targets are well below those achieved by hemodialysis; higher targets could possibly achieve even better long-term results, but this is unknown.

Copyright © 1992 by Multimed Inc.