Peritoneal dialysis offers daily treatment

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Peritoneal dialysis offers daily treatment

By ELLYN COUVILLION
Advocate staff writer
Published: May 1, 2011 - Page: 1D
 
Twice a day, in his office at Associated Grocers, where he’s director of information management, Bill Burke, who has an inherited kidney disease, gives himself a dialysis treatment.

Later that night, at home while he sleeps, Burke has more dialysis, provided by an automated system that continues to rid his body of waste and fluids.

The dialysis he uses, called peritoneal dialysis, has made a great difference for the better in Burke’s life, since he began using it in 2007.

“My life went downhill. When I went on dialysis, it turned up; it got way better,” Burke said.

Dialysis has improved his life, but Burke hopes that one day he’ll be able to experience the other option  for those with chronic kidney disease — a kidney transplant.

The life expectancy of someone who undergoes a successful kidney transplant is double that of someone on dialysis, said Dr. Leslie Spry, a kidney specialist in Lincoln, Neb., who’s the chair of the National Kidney Foundation’s Public Policy Committee.

Spry said an average survival rate for someone in dialysis is about seven to 10 years. Another survival rate provided by the National Kidney Foundation of Louisiana is two to eight years.

Burke, who’s 57, was diagnosed at age 39 with an inherited polycystic kidney disease.

“The kidney basically destroys itself,” he said.

“When I was 39, I got headaches associated with hypertension,” Burke said.

“One of the first things kidneys do (when they’re failing) is to raise the blood pressure, to improve filtration,” he said.

Burke, the father of four children ages 13 to 25, said that after his diagnosis, he went into a very gradual, 15-year “slide into renal failure.”

He said that one day, “I walked up the stairs to work — it was Sept. 28, 2007 — and it hit me. I couldn’t go on anymore. I felt awful.”

With the help of his physician and the physician’s staff, he began dialysis that day, having already put preparations in place for that eventuality.

Most importantly, Burke had earlier had surgery to have a catheter implanted in his abdomen, the means by which he would be able to have peritoneal dialysis, the type of dialysis he had chosen.

In peritoneal dialysis, the patient goes through cycles, in which a fresh bag of dialysis solution is drained into the abdomen.

The solution pulls wastes and excess fluid into the abdominal cavity over several hours, and the used solution is then later drained and thrown away. Then the cycle begins again, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Burke received training in the procedure from his medical support staff.

He chose peritoneal dialysis for a number of reasons, he said.

He had watched his late mother go through eight years of hemodialysis, the type that sends blood through a filter, and decided to try a different method, he said.

Burke said he also likes the daily treatment that peritoneal dialysis provides, and the fact that he can incorporate the treatment fairly easily into his work day.

“I feel better now on dialysis than I did the last two years of the (downward) slide” in his health before that, he said.

“My energy was so depleted … I think I was way too stoic,” Burke said.

He’s been on a waiting list for a kidney transplant for about five years.

Burke’s experienced some bone loss, due to his kidney disease, and hopes he can receive a transplant before he suffers too much more.

“A good transplant could mean eight to 10 really good years” free of dialysis, Burke said.

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