Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD) is a genetic disease and can run in the
family. At present, there is no effective treatment for the disease. Once
patients are diagnosed with the disease, it means that they have to live with
the disease in the rest of their life. In most cases, the patients with PKD just
receive some treatments to alleviate their symptoms not the disease itself. As a
result, their renal function will decline gradually thus causing Renal Failure.
At last, nearly all patients with PKD have to depend on dialysis to maintain
their life. However, dialysis can cause lots of complications to patients. Among
its complications, malnutrition can make patients’ resistibility decline, have
infection and loss of stamina thus influencing patients’ normal life. Therefore,
it is very important for patients with Renal Failure to keep a healthy diet to
make up for nutrition lose when taking dialysis.
The patients on Dialysis should have higher protein intake than the normal.
The patients on hemodialysis should keep their protein intake within 1~1.2grams/
kg per day and 1.2~1.5 grams for patients on peritoneal dialysis per day.
Moreover, the patients should be very careful in selecting protein and should
increase the quality protein intake such as lean meat, fish and other animal
protein. However, the patients should decline the vegetable protein intake and
even avoid eating food that contains vegetable protein for they contain too much
non-essential amino acid and high phosphorus that can cause much burden to their
kidney. In addition, the patients should also avoid eating animal offal that
contains too high phosphorus. If the patients do not limit its intake, it is
very likely to cause hyperkalemia.
Moreover, the patients on dialysis should not have too limitation on fruit,
especially the patients on peritoneal dialysis. Dialysis can clear up potassium
in body thus increasing the risk of hypokalemia. Therefore, some patients should
eat more fruit that contain abundant potassium such as oranges. However, if the
patients do not have urine, they should limit the intake of food that contains
high potassium.
In addition, if the patients on hemodialysis do not have urine output, they
should limit their water and salt intake strictly. For patients on peritoneal
dialysis, if their urine output volume is normal, they do not need to limit
their water or salt intake seriously.
Dialysis is a common treatment method for patients with Renal Failure. It
affects patients’ normal life seriously and brings much pain to their body and
mind. Therefore, the patients with PKD should treat their disease as early as
possible so as to prevent their disease from developing Renal Failure thus
making them live a normal life.
