Better preservation of cognitive faculty in continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis.
We employed the so-called event-correlated potential (ECP) P300, a neurophysiological test which explores the circuits of attention and memory in the brain and is altered in subjects with a dismetabolic or degenerative encephalopathy, in order to evaluate the cognitive faculty in two groups of uremic patients [18 on continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD), 15 on hemodialysis (HD)] comparable with respect to age and time on dialysis. The values of latency (msec) of P300 resulted in CAPD patients 356 +/- 26 in CZ (central zero electrodes) and 357.5 +/- 25 in PZ (parietal zero electrodes), not significantly different from the values in normal controls (341 +/- 14.5 in CZ and 340 +/- 15.6 in PZ) and in HD patients postdialysis (354 +/- 24.4 in CZ and 354 +/- 25.6 in PZ). On the contrary, the predialytic values of HD patients (384 +/- 25.6 CZ and 385 +/- 25.5 in PZ) were significantly different from the postdialytic values and from the values of CAPD patients and controls (p < 0.01). These results support the conclusion that HD is able to restore a normal cognitive faculty only transiently in the postdialytic phase, while CAPD maintains this important function steadily close to the normal range, thus being clearly better than HD.
Buoncristiani
U
U
Nephrology Unit, Ospedale Silvestrini S. Andrea delle Fratte, Perugia, Italy.
Alberti
A
A
Gubbiotti
G
G
Mazzotta
G
G
Gallai
V
V
Quintaliani
G
G
Gaburri
M
M
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology*; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007676:Kidney Failure, Chronic / Q000150:complications* / Q000628:therapy*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010531:Peritoneal Dialysis, Continuous Ambulatory; D006435:Renal Dialysis