Using the hemodialysis prognostic nutrition index and urea reduction ratio to predict morbidity and mortality: a pilot study of the 1995 council on renal nutrition national research question.

Objective: To validate the use of the hemodialysis prognostic nutrition index (HPNI) in an alternate hemodialysis population and to determine if use of urea reduction ratio would improve use in outcome prediction for morbidity and mortality.

Design: Prospective random cohort.

Setting: Hospital based non-for-profit outpatient dialysis unit.

Does intra-abdominal fluid increase the resting energy expenditure?

In patients with intra-abdominal fluid collection, caloric needs are based on an estimated dry weight. This is done because intra-abdominal fluid has been assumed to be metabolically inactive. One recent study of patients with slowly resolving ascites suggested otherwise.

Asymptomatic, nonketotic, severe hyperglycemia with hyponatremia.

We describe five patients with asymptomatic, nonketotic, severe hyperglycemia (serum glucose concentrations between 45.8 and 92 mmol/L) in the face of renal insufficiency are described. As opposed to most of the previously described patients with hyperglycemic, nonketotic, hyperosmolar coma, our patients were hyponatremic.

Successful revascularization of an occluded renal artery after prolonged anuria.

Renal atherosclerosis and fibromuscular dysplasia are the most common causes of curable human renovascular hypertension and renal failure. Vascular reconstruction often preserves renal function, but renal failure is rarely reversed, especially after days of anuria. We report a case of a 23-year-old woman who as a child underwent a nephrectomy for congenital hydroureter and renal hypoplasia.