Introduction:
Patients on maintenance haemodialysis (MHD) often complain of fatigue and tiredness following haemodialysis sessions leading to poor compliance with the dialysis schedule. There is limited Indian data on dialysis recovery time (DRT). The present study was designed to assess the factors affecting DRT in our haemodialysis population
Methods:
We recorded self-reported patient recovery times of 120 patients who satisfied the inclusion criteria, over three consecutive dialysis sessions by asking the question, 'How long does it take to recover from a dialysis session'? Data recorded included patient factors like age, sex, co-morbidities, Charlson comorbidity index score (CCI), dialysis vintage, duration of kidney disease, interdialytic weight gain (IDWG), treatment factors like ultrafiltration rate (UFR), SpKt/V, blood pump speed, dialysate sodium, session length, pre and post HD blood pressure and laboratory parameters. Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) was assessed with the KDQOL-SF v. 1.3 questionnaire. Results from the SF-36 score were summarized into the physical composite score (PCS), mental composite score (MCS) and kidney disease composite score (KDCS)
Results:
The mean age of the study population was 50.6 ± 12.6 years. Among the 120 patients, 77 (64.2%) were males. Thirty-nine patients (32.5%) were diabetic and 95 (79.1%) patients were hypertensive. The mean dialysis vintage of the study population was 26.1 ± 18.6 months, 41 (34.2%) patients reported DRT <2 h; 48 (40%) reported DRT between 2–6 h and 31 (25.8%) reported DRT >6 h. There is high test-retest consistency showing that the interpretation of the question by patients was fairly constant On multivariate regression analysis, higher IDWG, CCI score and UFR were associated with prolonged DRT. Reported DRT also inversely correlated with PCS (r = - 0.66), MCS (r = - 0.65) and KDCS (r = - 0.59) scores which was statistically significant.
Conclusions:
The present study concludes that DRT is associated with poor QoL in Indian HD patients. CCI score, IDWG and UFR are significantly associated with prolonged recovery time. Other parameters like age, sex, serum albumin, haemoglobin and dialysis vintage were not associated with DRT. Hence, interventions to reduce DRT such as reducing the UFR by more frequent dialysis, reducing IDWG by patient education and adjustment in dialysate sodium need to be assessed in further trials in Indian Hemodialysis patients.
I have no potential conflict of interest to disclose.
I did not use generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process.