The post-hemodialysis rebound: predicting and quantifying its effect on Kt/V

Immediately after hemodialysis, the urea concentration rebounds upwards as urea continues to be transferred into the arterial circulation from peripheral body compartments. This rebound takes at least 30 minutes to complete. Hemodialysis is quantified as the Kt/V, calculated prom pre- and post-dialysis urea samples. Unless the post-dialysis sample is taken at least 30 minutes after dialysis, the Kt/V will be overestimated. This overestimation will be relatively greater in short high-efficiency dialyses, which have greater post-dialysis rebounds. We propose a method of correction that uses only the conventional pre- and immediate post-dialysis samples and is based on the physiologically-appropriate patient clearance time (tp). This is the time needed to clear all body compartments when the dialyzer clearance is infinite. The tp can be calculated from the pre-, immediate post- and 30-minute post-dialysis urea concentrations and was 35 minutes (SD 16) in 29 patients undergoing short (149 min) hemodiafiltration and standard (243 min) hemodialysis the following week. There was no significant difference between tp values calculated during the two treatments. Standard Kt/V can be corrected by multiplying by t/(t + tp) and dialysis time should be increased by tp x Kt/V minutes to compensate for the rebound. Despite individual variations in tp, a value of tp = 35 was sufficient to correct Kt/V in all patients. Kt/V corrected in this way agreed with Kt/V calculated using a 60-minute post-dialysis sample (r = 0.856, P < 0.001). The method predicted the 60-minute post-rebound concentration (SE 0.5 mM, r = 0.983, P < 0.001) and the addition of 35 minutes to the treatment time corrected for the rebound in both conventional and short treatments. Similar simple equations corrected the error in V caused by rebound effects.