Prevalence of access recirculation in prevalent arterio-venous [A-V] fistula hemodialysis patients and its effect on hemodialysis adequacy

ABSTRACT

Background: Assessment of access recirculation [AR] is crucial to dialysis efficiency and there is thus a need for a method yielding a highly accurate, fast, easy and economical measurement that can be applied in any dialysis clinic. Non-urea based dilutional methods are more accurate than urea based methods and avoid problems with cardiopulmonary recirculation, but they require expensive specialized devices, which limit their applicability