Moving Away From Measuring Serum Urea Nitrogen to Estimate Dialyzer Urea Clearance: Technological Panacea or Curio?
One of the aims of maintenance dialysis is to clear waste products of metabolism that would otherwise accumulate. In the 1970s, the National Co-operative Dialysis Study (NCDS) reported that patients with a higher time-averaged serum urea nitrogen (SUN) concentration were more likely to be hospitalized or become unwell and drop out of the study.1 Gotch and Sargent2 subsequently reanalyzed the NCDS data and developed the concept of dialyzer urea clearance using only pre- and postdialysis session SUN samples, and normalized urea clearance (Kt) to total-body water (V).