Causes of Itching in Dialysis Patients

Itching is a common complaint of dialysis patients. About 60 %-90% hemodialysis patients suffer from such a complication. With the extending of dialysis, itching aggravates gradually, making the patients anxious and painful. Besides, this can greatly affect the patients’ life quality. If you can not take good care of the itching, it can increase medical cost and even threaten your life. What are the causes of itching in dialysis patients? In the following, we will give you the answer.

1. Electrolyte metabolic disorders

Because of kidney function impairment, the kidneys can not remove the phosphorus from the body, resulting in high phosphorus level and low blood calcium, which can stimulate the secretion of PTH to cause secondary hyperparathyroidism. Researches show that secondary hyperparathyroidism can lead to hypercalcemia and calcinosis cutis so as to stimulate the skin to release histamine and give rise to itching skin.

2. Retention of nitrogen metabolites

Retention of nitrogen metabolites can stimulate the skin, making the sebaceous glands and sweat glands atrophy. As a result, your skin will become dry and itchy. It may be associated with inadequate dialysis. Due to economic reasons, some patients reduce the dialysis frequency and choose the cheap dialyzer with low permeability. Besides, if the dialyzer is reused many times, it easily results in inadequate dialysis and retention of nitrogen metabolites.

3. Allergic reaction

Allergic reaction is also a contributor of skin itching. It is common among dialysis patients because of the increased histamine concentrations in the blood caused by heparin and epoxy ethane stimulating spleen and bone marrow.

According to the different causes, there are different measures to help you ease skin itch. If you do not know how to care for yourselves, our online doctors can give you some personal suggestion. Of course, there are therapies to help you improve kidney function so as to avoid dialysis.