Diet Nursing for Dialysis Patients

At present, blood purification equipments update constantly and this has helped to significantly prolong the patients' survival time. However, with constant dialysis, the patients will lose their appetite and may suffer from many other diseases because of malnutrition. So, diet nursing for dialysis patients has become an important topic.
1. Get enough protein
Dialysis can make the patient lose a certain amount of protein and amino acid, and it can also promote protein alienation effect, resulting in negative nitrogen balance. Therefore, dialysis patients should get more protein. Eighty percent of patients should get high-quality protein such as egg white, milk, lean, fish, etc. Such high-quality protein can increase the utilization of protein and produce less metabolic waste.
2. A moderate amount of calorie intake
Sufficient calories can restrain protein alienation and help the patient maintain their weight. If their calorie intake is insufficient, the protein will be consumed as calories. It can produce more metabolic waste just because protein decomposing metabolism accelerates.
3. Maintain the water balance and limit the salt intake
Most of dialysis patients have less urine or no urine, so they should control their water intake strictly and eat less food that contains a lot of water. Maintaining the water balance is the key to prevent complications and increase the survival rate of dialysis patients. Eating much salted food will make the patient thirsty, and then they will want to have more water. So limiting the salt intake is more important than limiting the water intake.
4. Restrict kalium, phosphorus intake
A high quantity of serum kalium can cause arrhythmia and cardiac failure, so dialysis patients should avoid the vegetables which contain a lot of kalium such as spinach, leaf mustard, balsam pear, chives, kelp, agaric, etc. Hyperphosphatemia can cause renal osteopathia, so limiting phosphorus intake in the diet nursing is very important. Phosphorus mainly exists in dairy products, egg yolks and animal innards and so on.
5. Increase water-soluble vitamin intake
Because dialysis patients lack of activated vitamin D, blood calcium concentration is relatively low. The patients inevitably lose water-soluble vitamins in the dialysis. So they must increase the intake of water-soluble vitamins.
Diet nursing is an ideal treatment for dialysis patients, so they should pay more attention to their diet in their daily life. Getting enough nutrition can help them to fight against their disease more powerfully.