Peritoneal dialysis can help kidney patients remove wastes and excess fluid from body, but some patients still have swelling or edema. What causes swelling for peritoneal dialysis patients? Read on to learn more information.

The common causes of swelling for peritoneal dialysis patients

1. Excessive water and salt intake

Peritoneal dialysis itself has a low ability to remove sodium, especially when the patients already have fluid retention. Many patients are often thirsty, or difficult to change their past habits, or lack of awareness of the importance of controlling fluids, so they can not control the intake of water and salt well, leading to edema. Once edema occurs, it is often difficult to correct it.

2. Water and salt removal reduces

With the prolongation of peritoneal dialysis treatment time, the residual renal function of patients gradually decreases or loses. Even if the peritoneal function of patients does not change, total water clearance will decrease because of the decrease of residual renal function. On the other hand, changes in peritoneal transport function may lead to reduced water clearance. In addition, the aggravation of lymphatic reflux and the increase of lymphatic reabsorption lead to volume overload and edema.

3. New complications

For example, cardiac insufficiency or aggravation of the original heart disease, hypoalbuminemia, mechanical or anatomical complications, etc., reduce the volume of ultrafiltration through abdominal dialysis.

4. Age

Compared with the proportion of normal adult body fluid volume to body weight (male 60%, female 55%), the volume of body fluid in the elderly only accounts for 45% of body weight. The decrease of body fluid volume in the elderly is mainly due to dehydration and retraction of cells, decrease of intracellular fluid, increase of extracellular fluid, and easy to be in a state of non-dominant edema. Therefore, elderly patients with peritoneal dialysis are more likely to be in a non-dominant edema state. Sometimes it is inaccurate to only rely on clinical symptoms and signs to determine the inaccurate volume state, so physical and chemical examination is needed.

What causes swelling for peritoneal dialysis patients? Now you are clear about this question. To eliminate swelling, you can try Toxin-Removing Treatment, which can not only relieve symptoms, but also improve renal function. For more information on this treatment, please leave a message below or contact online doctor.