PET & Adequacy Strangeness

[pinkyD]

I have been doing PD for just about 4 years now and my clinic is making everyone redo their PET tests. My results have come back as "low average". My PET when I first started pegged me at "high average". Everyone is kind of dumbfounded as to how this is so. I always thought that transport status goes low-->high and not the other way around. This would explain why my adequacy has fluctuated so much in the past year requiring adjustments to my prescription several times. Well, I just did my adequacy for the quarter, and it was low again. In fact, the drop was so significant that my nurse is making me repeat it. I'm so confused as to what is going on. I'm afraid that it might be the beginning of the end of PD, even though the membrane seems to have gotten "better" ( not quite sure how to word it).

Any thoughts?

[Paul]

What is a PET test? I just tried querying Google and the only results it gave were for a test on how well you speak English (as a foreign language). I cannot see how that would be pertinent, so am assuming it is something different.

[pinkyD]

PET is Peritoneal Equilibration Test. It measures how fast or slow your membrane filters out toxins and is helpful to determine your dialysis prescription.

[Paul]

Thanks.

[sahern]

Mine is low average.  I was concerned when I started that this would make my tie on PD shorter. The nurse told me she has seen low averages move to a high average so as not to worry a bout being a low average.  I hope it works out and everything is fine after the retest.

[pinkyD]

Doing some internet digging, I found a few studies that have found some pd patients actually do go from high-->low transport rate. This decrease has been associated with avoiding hypertonic glucose solutions (green and red bags). It was also found that in some patients the transport rate starts off high, after ~1.5 years becomes low, and then slowly rises with time on pd.

Adequacy came back and it's ok at 1.8. So no changes to my prescription yet. yay!

[dialysisrn49]

PET'S are just a standard test that helps to determine what kind of changes to your prescription should be most effective if it's determined that your adequacy isn't at goal.