Influence of intraperitoneal volume on QT dispersion in patients with continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis: acute cardiac impact of peritoneal dialysis.

AIM: The leading cause of mortality in dialysis patients is cardiovascular complications, including ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death. QT dispersion (QTd), a simple noninvasive arrhythmogenic marker, is used to assess homogeneity of cardiac repolarization. It was also significantly prolonged in continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD) patients. The acute cardiac effect of increased abdominal pressure due to infused dialysate during CAPD is not clear yet. In this study we aimed to evaluate corrected QTd (cQTd) and cardiac injury markers such as plasma pro-brain natriuretic peptide (proBNP) and troponin I (TnI) in CAPD patients before and after an infusion of peritoneal dialysate fluid.

METHODS: Thirty subjects (16 women, 14 men; mean age, 40.21 ± 12.34 years) enrolled in our study. QTd, cQTd, maximum QT (QTmax), maximum corrected QT (cQTmax), minimum QT (QTmin), and minimum corrected QT (cQTmin) intervals were measured from standard 12-lead electrocardiography.

RESULTS: We found that cQTmax, cQTmin, and cQTd were not changed from baseline measurement after infusion of dialysate in CAPD patients (460 ± 49 vs. 460 ± 38, p = 0.9; 410 ± 36 vs. 410 ± 41, p = 0.8; 470 ± 30 vs. 460 ± 25, p = 0.7, respectively). There were no statistically significant differences between before and after peritoneal dialysate according to the levels of proBNP and TnI (155.64 ± 76.41 vs. 208.30 ± 118.46, p = 0.2; 0.008 ± 0.007 vs. 0.01 ± 0.011; p = 0.4, respectively).

CONCLUSION: In conclusion, we did not find any significant effect of peritoneal dialysate fluid infusion volume on QTd and cardiac injury markers in patients with chronic renal failure receiving CAPD therapy, which is thought to be a safer modality of dialysis.