Haemodialysis is a process where people whose kidneys aren’t working properly get the toxins and extra water they are carrying removed from their blood. People on dialysis may have two or three sessions a week, and between sessions the extra water will gradually build up again, because their kidneys cannot remove it properly. This extra water can build up in different parts of the body, including the lungs.
This project will involve 25 patients at Cork University Hospital who are on dialysis. Tests will be carried out to see how well their lungs are working immediately before a dialysis session, immediately afterwards and once each day until their next dialysis session. From these results it will be possible to track any changes to how well their lungs are working between dialysis sessions. The patients will also be weighed at each meeting to track their water build up, and they will answer a questionnaire about how breathless they are feeling.
From these results, it can be decided when would be the best time to do lung tests on people on dialysis in order to get a good idea of how well their lungs are working: before, immediately after, or one or two days after dialysis.
If there are some people in the study who have a diagnosis which reduces how well their lungs work, and some who do not, the results of these two groups will be compared, to see when the first group’s lung problems are most noticeable.