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My name is Christine Marquette, and I'm a registered dietitian with The Austin Regional
Clinic, and I'm going to talk to you about the side effects of kidney dialysis. There
are many different side effects associated with kidney dialysis, and some of them depend
on the type of dialysis that you're getting. There are two main types, hemodialysis and
peritoneal dialysis, or PD. PD is the type of dialysis that a person can actually do
at home or on the job. With this particular type there's actually a couple of other subtypes.
One involves basically what is called ambulatory dialysis, and this particular person has a
catheter that's been implanted into their abdomen. They are doing exchanges with the
diasolate solution where they basically pour in the diasolate solution, go on about their
business for four or five hours, and then drain out the diasolate solution, and exchange
it with a new solution. The risk in this particular type is infection in that particular area
where the catheter is, because again, you have exposure from your outside skin. There
could be any source of bacteria that may enter into the diasolate solution, so you have a
very high risk of infection, not just on the catheter area, but also inside your peritoneal
cavity, or your peritoneum, so there is a very high risk for that source of infection.
Another type of side effect that could be associated with PD is actually developing
hernias. The reason why is because your muscles in your abdomen become weak when using this
form of dialysis, and because you have all of that liquid solution in there it is pushing
putting even more pressure on these already weak muscles, so you have a very high risk
of developing a hernia. If you're using hemodialysis that's a type of dialysis where you actually
are going into a dialysis center about three days a week, and you're in there for about
four hours, and there you could also have infection, but more common side effects are
things like low blood pressure, having very dry skin, itchy skin, and you can actually
also become malnourished if you're not consuming enough high quality protein. And another possible
side effect would be actually having excess levels of phosphorus if you aren't following
the renal diet that's been prescribed for you. So, there's actually several different
side effects that can occur, depending on whether you're using peritoneal dialysis or
hemodialysis.