ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Chronic anemia inceases cardiovascular risk and its related mortality in patients with undergoing maintenance hemodialysis. To resolve the issue of anemia due to diminished synthesis of erythropoietin (EPO), regular injection of parenteral recombinant human EPO was adopted in most dialysis center. But we are not aware of previous reports of the relationship between modality or intensity of dialysis and anemia with EPO resistancy. For these reasons, we investigated the relation between the adequacy of dialysis and the response of EPO in end stage renal disease (ESRD) patients who were receiving maintenance hemodialysis at least for three months in same condition. METHODS: We studied prospectively 57 adult ESRD patients with hemoglobin below 11 g/dL. RESULTS: 13 patients showed the under dialysis, and there was no differences in clinical features with the control groups, except the ratio of gender. At the beginning of the study, the control groups who received adequate dialysis showed better nutritional state. The groups who had received under dialysis showed the increment of 37% in Kt/V from 3.02+/-0.79 to 4.21+/-0.24 (p< 0.01), Hb from 8.98+/-0.79 to 9.34+/-0.97 g/dL (p< 0.01), and Hct from 26.44+/-2.38 to 27.31+/-2.95% (p< 0.05) after increase of the dialysis doses. CONCLUSION: Based on above results, we concluded that the patients with EPO could be improved in chronic anemia by means of increased dialysis doses.