What Are High Creatinine Level To Begin Renal Dialysis Treatment

Renal dialysis is one important treatment for end stage kidney disease patients to help discharge extreme building up of metabolic wastes and toxins (which often make them sick) so as to purify the blood, alleviate symptoms and prolong life expectancy.

Usually when illness progresses into the 4th stage, doctor will suggest the patients to prepare for dialysis and when the illness progresses into the 5th stage (also called end stage or final stage of various kidney diseases) dialysis will be needed.

Then how to calculate the stages of kidney disease, in clinic serum creatinine level usually be measured and then GFR will be calculated to determine which stage of CKD the patient is in.

For the accurate creatinine level to begin dialysis, it is hard to say because there are differences from country to country, from hospital to hospital and from person to person. But generally speaking, for adult kidney disease patients, creatinine 8 will begin to receive regular dialysis and for children kidney disease patients, the level to start dialysis is much lower than that in adults. Children will need dialysis when their creatinine is 2. This is because children have less muscles and they produce less creatinine than adults. From this, we can see that each person should have different value as their normal creatinine and that is why there is a range for the normal creatinine for women, men, adults and children.

To determine weather a patient need dialysis or not, doctors will need to measure several blood chemical levels before dialysis is offered. Serum creatinine is one important indicator for guiding dialysis, but it is not the only one and there are many other factors that need to be taken into account. That is why some patients will need dialysis when their creatinine is still much lower than 8 while some others still do not have dialysis even when their creatinine is higher than 10.

The patients’ current illness conditions are very important. If they have no obvious symptoms or discomforts, dialysis is not necessary even when their creatinine is very high. But they need to seek early and proper treatment to lower high creatinine and prevent further increase of creatinine. If patients are in a critical conditions such as severe hyperkalaemia, acidosis, hemorrhage, heart failure, dialysis should be offered even when their creatinine is not very high.

During dialysis treatment, serum creatinine level and BUN need to be measured regularly to see the curative effects and do some adjustment according to any changes of the patient’s illness conditions.