Correlation of Renal Impairment and Duration of Hemodialysis with Electromyoneurographic Findings in Chronic Kidney Disease

Uremic polyneuropathy (PN) is a common concomitant sign of chronic kidney disease (CKD). Numerous studies have demonstrated improvement of symptoms and signs of polyneuropathy on hemodialysis. The aim of this study was to evaluate association between duration of hemodialysis(HD)treatment and the type of polyneuropathy, and association between duration of hemodialysis and sensory and motor nerve conduction velocities for the sural and peroneal nerve. We also examined correlation between glomerular fi ltration rate (GFR) as an indicator of renal impairment and the type of polyneuropathy, and the correlation between GFR and sensory and motor nerve conduction velocities of the sural and peroneal nerve in patients with CKD not treated with HD. Th is study was carried out with 30 patients, 12 females and 18 males, average age 62.67 ± 13.2 years. Patients were divided into 3 groups, each consisting of 10 patients: CKD patients with no need for HD; patients on HD for one year; and CKD patients on HD for 2-12 years. Sensory nerve conduction velocity of the sural nerve and motor nerve conduction velocity of the peroneal nerve were measured by electromyoneurography. Twenty patients were treated with HD for an average 3.85 ± 1.5 years (median 1.5, range 1-12 years). Results showed that 19 out of all patients had sensory polyneuropathy, eight patients had sensorimotor polyneuropathy, and three patients had no signs of neuropathy. We found a negative but statistically insignifi cant association between sensory and motor nerve conduction velocities and the degree of renal impairment and duration of HD treatment. Possible explanations for such fi ndings could be the existence of extreme values of studied variables, the older age of study subjects, and an inadequate HD treatment.