Protein intake seems to respond to increases in Kt/V despite baseline Kt/V greater than 1.2

The nutritional status is a strong predictor of outcome in hemodialysis patients. Adequate delivery of dialysis is necessary for hemodialysis patients to maintain their protein nutrition. In general, a single-pool Kt/V of 1.2 has been considered adequate dialysis. We recently decided to maximize the blood flow during hemodialysis in all of our patients; this enabled us to increase the dose of delivered dialysis in those patients who were not initially utilizing their maximum blood flow. There were 18 patients who already received a Kt/V greater than 1.2. We were able to increase Kt/V even further in 10 of them, resulting in a significant increase in nPCR and a trend to increase serum albumin over the next 6 months of follow-up. The mean normalized protein catabolic rate (nPCR) and serum albumin remained unchanged in the remaining 8 patients whose Kt/V could not be increased. Our data provide evidence that protein intake in hemodialysis patients will increase with an increase in delivered dialysis above the level generally considered to be adequate.