Can a different priming process of the dialyzer affect dialysis adequacy in chronic hemodialysis patients?
In this study, we investigated whether a different priming process of the dialyzer could affect the dialysis adequacy in chronic hemodialysis (HD) patients. 20 HD patients (M/F:12/8) with a median age of 40 (20-74) were included in this study. All the patients were clinically stable and were on bicarbonate-based hemodialysis program 3 times in a week. During the study period of 6 months, we tried to keep the vascular accesses, types and surfaces of the membranes and also the blood and dialysate flow rates almost the same for all patients. For the first 3 months of the study we performed our routine priming process by flushing 1 L of saline from the bloodline without any dialysate passing through the dialyzer. For the next 3 months, we carried out a different priming process. While we passed 1 L of saline through the blood compartment of the dialyzer, we also started the dialysate pump to get a flow rate of 500 mL/min for 30 minutes. After a 3 month period of different priming process,
