Treatment to minimize intradialytic hypotension
What are some of the treatments used to help minimize intradialytic hypotension?
The incidence of hypotension can be minimized by assessing dry weight on a regular basis and counseling the patient on avoiding large fluid gains between dialysis treatments, using a combination of a fluid-restricted and low-salt diet.
Additional measures that may be beneficial include increasing the dialysis treatment time to decrease the hourly ultrafiltration rate, decreasing the dialysate temperature by 0.5°C to 2.0°C, avoiding intradialytic food ingestion, and using midodrine (an alpha-adrenergic agonist) in patients who do not have active cardiac ischemia.
Midodrine is ineffective if the patient is prescribed alpha-adrenergic blockers.
