Peritoneal dialysis on an airplane???

[bluedolphin]

How could a person on peritoneal dialysis go from say London to Australia (really long flight) ....do airlines have places on board for people needing this?

[Jo Brodie]

According to the British Airways website [1] "special arrangements exist for the carriage of portable dialysis equipment." Presumably other airline companies will have some similar arrangements. From the National Kidney & Urologic Diseases Information Clearinghouse website [2] it seems that there is a need for some way of raising (and hanging) the dialysis bag to allow gravity to get the solution into the abdomen, but this doesn't have to be complicated equipment. "To begin each exchange, you connect (... to) a fresh bag of solution and hang the bag higher than the catheter, usually attaching it to a special stand, so that gravity pulls the solution into your abdomen. While the solution is in your abdomen, you can roll up the bag and wear it under your clothes. When you've finished your dwell time, you take the bag out and place it near the floor so that gravity pushes the used solution down into the bag." References. [1] http://www.britishairways.com/travel/healthmedcond
/public/en_ [2] http://kidney.niddk.nih.gov/kudiseases/pubs/perito
neal/ Other websites which might be useful: National Kidney Federation - http://www.kidney.org.uk/ Peritoneal Dialysis - http://www.theblackriver.net/peritonealdialysis.ht
ml Jo

[Jo Brodie]

It's also worth mentioning that if the person having peritoneal dialysis also has diabetes, then they should be aware that checking their blood glucose levels with certain meters can give a falsely high reading - if the dialysate uses ICODEXTRIN (a glucose polymer).

There have been a few cases of people whose readings were 17mmol/L (normal range 4-7) but whose actual measurements (using laboratory methods which use a different technique) were nearer 2mmol/L.

Before icodextrin is metabolised to glucose, it goes through some intermediate stages of maltose and others - these metabolites can interfere with the enzyme used in the test strips to estimate glucose levels.

The MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) has issued a product alert for people with diabetes using icodextrin metabolites - these people should be careful if testing their blood with Roche Accu-Chek Advantage II test strips.

http://tinyurl.com/2zjy9

"Risk of overestimation of blood glucose results when these test strips are used with patients on treatments containing maltose (including metabolites of maltose and icodextrin)"

Note that the strips work fine under normal circumstances where icodextrin is not used. The levels of maltose normally found don't make a difference and the problem only affects people who have kidney failure and a reduced capacity to metabolise maltose.
Jo