I Hate Dialysis Message Board
Dialysis Discussion => Dialysis: General Discussion => Topic started by: huldafolk on February 22, 2011, 11:27:03 AM
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It is true that dialysis patients have a very high incidence of heart/vascular problems as time passes on dialysis. I like to state that dialysis keeps me alive from day to day, but over time it is killing me. I have been without kidneys for 7.5 years, on heamo for the same time period. I have had the Right Coronary Artery stented with a bare metal stent (18mm long) back in Nov. of 2010. In 3 months I have just had to go thru another cath lab procedure due to heart discomfort. It was found that the stent had restenosed 70% during those 3 months with what was described as scar tissue. They placed a new drug eluting stent right over the original to open the vessel back up again. They then looked further into the vasculature of my left side of my heart and found that the Left Coronary Artery was 70 to 80% blocked along it's entire length. They had to place 3 stents in a row totaling 66mm. All the new stents are drug eluting to help reduce the possibility of reblocking.I was advised that the material blocking the left side was calcified in nature and was due to dialysis and diabetic patient are also prone to this type of blockage ( I am not diabetic). This was stated by the interventional cardiologist. So, no mater how hard you try to maintain your proper heart healthy diet and keep your fluid levels low at treatments, you are at great risk of heart attack and stroke just due to being on dialysis over time. You should have a MIBI test to check the heart vessel perfusion on a regular basis( MIBI is not always totally indicative of what is going on). The angiogram is the definitive test for heart vessel health.