What Is The Creatinine Level To Begin Dialysis

The creatinine-lowering effect of dialysis has to be confirmed since dialysis is just like an artificial kidney and the basic function is dialysis is remove excessive accumulation of metabolic wastes and toxins from the body so as to lower high creatinine, high BUN and purify the blood.

However for early stage kidney disease, dialysis is not necessary because we know that long term dialysis can cause a series of side effects and patients will become dependent on dialysis and the residual kidney functions will be gradually lost.

Serum creatinine is an important index reflecting kidney functions and therefore it is commonly used in clinic to measure severity of kidney damages and as one indicator for beginning dialysis.

So what is the creatinine level for end stage renal disease patients to start dialysis? Usually when serum creatinine level is higher than 8 and creatinine clearance rate is less than 5, dialysis will be started or excessive building up of creatinine in the blood will cause a series of symptoms and complications such as hyperkalaemia, hyperuricemia, hyperlipidemia, hypoalbuminemia and metabolic acidosis, etc.

Actually creatinine should not be the only indicator to guide the beginning of dialysis, there are other factors that need to be taken into account such as your

blood potassium level and how you are feeling now, etc. For example, when creatinine is higher than 6 or if Ccr is less than 15 and patients have one of the following complications, dialysis should be started.

·pulmonary edema or heart failure

·pericarditis

·hemorrhage

·neurological lesions

·high blood potassium

·nausea and vomiting

·acidosis

·cachexia

·BUN is higher than 100

What is more, different countries and kidney disease hospitals have different criteria for initial dialysis.

What is more important than current creatinine level is the trend of creatinine---weather it is stable, increasing or begin to be lowered. A good way to know the trend of creatinine level is GFR (glomerular filtration rate), therefore it is important and necessary measure the patients’ GFR and Ccr besides creatinine level when considering dialysis.