[Sympathetic skin response in chronic renal failure patients]

Background and Aim: uremic neuropathy is one of the most common complications of chronic renal failure. Autonomic neuropathy occurs in addition to peripheral somatic system involvement. Sympathetic skin response [SSR] is a simple noninvasive test for evaluation of skin's eccrine sweat glands activity in response to sympathetic stimulation. Pathway of this sympathetic response contains afferent myelinated fibers, central part and efferent unmyelinated sympathetic fibers

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Method: in this study SSR test was performed on 31 patients with chronic renal failure on regular hemodialysis and 35 normal controls

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Results: SSR was absent in 12 patients [38.7%] and abnormal in 23 patients [74%]. No good correlation was found between abnormal SSR and clinical dysautonomic symptoms, but it seems that SSR becomes abnormal long before appearance of clinical dysautonomic symptoms in chronic renal failure. Age, Sex, duration of hemodialysis and duration of history of renal failure had no effect on SSR, but SSR seems to be affected by high weekly frequency of hemodialysis

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Conclusion: so we concluded that in chronic renal failure peripheral sympathetic system involvement is common and adequate dialysis has effect on its progression