Highest Creatinine Level before Dialysis is Required

Dialysis is a renal replacement therapy for failed kidneys and it is one of the blood purification technologies. It takes advantage of the semipermeable membrane and it helps replace the kidney’ functions to discharge excessive metabolic wastes and electrolytes out of the body and help purify the blood and rectify the disorders and imbalances of water, electrolyte and acid-base.

Since kidney is vital organ to clear the metabolic wastes and toxins in the body, in case of renal dysfunction or even kidney failure, these wastes and toxins can not be discharged and there will be a series of clinical indicators such as the increase of creatinine level which is reliable for measuring kidney functions.

Creatinine include urine creatinine and serum creatinine and they are two items in the kidney function examinations and can be used to measure kidney function and the severity of kidney damages. The concentration of creatinine is not easy to be affected by diets and obvious increase of creatinine level indicates serious kidney damages and poor prognosis. When creatinine is too high, dialysis is needed to help lower the creatinine, and then what is the highest creatinine level before dialysis is required?

Actually there are great individual differences as to at what creatinine level should dialysis be offered and generally the male has relatively higher creatinine than the female. Usually the creatinine level for starting dialysis for male is 2.5-7.0mg/ml (220-620mmol/l) and it is 2.0-5.2mg/dl (180-460mmol/l) for the female. But one thing needs to be noted that this may not apply to all cases. It should depend on many factors such as the primary cause of kidney damages, physiological factors, physical conditions, symptoms and complications, etc.

To help lower creatinine level and avoid dialysis, the key point is to protect kidney function and prevent further damages to the kidneys. We all know that kidney diseases are easy to relapse under inducements of infections, cold or overtiredness. Therefore it is important for them to have some prevention measures. In case of high blood pressure, diabetes or systemic diseases, proper and timely treatments should be received to avoid renal involvement and regular check of kidney function is very necessary. Healthy lifestyle and reasonable diets and avoidance of renal toxicity medicines are all beneficial for protecting kidney functions and lowering creatinine level.