Nutritional interventions in dialysis patients

Abstract

Recently, dialysis patients are often suffering from frailty, protein energy wasting, and sarcopenia. Nutritional intervention is one of the important treatments to these statuses. Japanese Society of Dialysis Therapy published the standard nutrition intake in dialysis patients, which basically indicated the minimum nutritional requirements to avoid the dialysis complication, such as calcification, atherosclerosis, hypotension during dialysis therapy. But, theoretically maximum nutritional intake is much larger than the standard intake. Indeed, 60 kg dialysis patients could take 12.6 g/day at maximum, according to the relationship between body weight increase between dialysis sessions and mortality. Moreover, recent improvement of phosphate binders and dialysis therapy itself enlarged the allowance of nutritional intake. Under these circumstances, more aggressive nutritional intervention had become available for dialysis patients. Nutritional intervention could improve not only protein energy wasting, but also sarcopenia, or frailty itself, because these three concepts measured the same condition that aged patients are fragile from another aspect. Dual intervention (nutritional intervention and exercise intervention) had reported to improve not only nutritional or physical factors, but also quality of life, which indicating that dual intervention could ameliorate frailty itself. Multiple interventions to Frailty including aggressive nutritional intervention are expected to improve the mortality of dialysis patients.