Frequency of Gastrointestinal Diseases in Patients with End-Stage Renal Disease Treated with Long Term Dialysis

Abstract

Background: Gastrointestinal complications are frequent in patients with renal disease and are responsible for substantial morbidity and mortality among these patients in developing countries. Many times, these patients are subjected to endoscopic evaluation and mucosal biopsies are taken for definitive diagnosis. Long before the routine uses of dialysis, patients dying of uremia were found to have a high incidence of gastrointestinal abnormalities (1).Matherials and methods: The survey included 240 persons; 120 of them were dialysis patients, while the remaining 120 were healthy individuals who served as a control group. 54 (45%) of the patients with hemodialysis were females while 66 (55%) of them were males with mean age: 58.20 ± 18.00 years. These patients had been in dialysis for more than 12 years at the Clinic for Nephrology in Skopje and the Clinical Hospital in Tetovo.Results: Gastrointestinal complications were present in 20 (37.0%) out of 54 females while 26 (39.4%) out of 66 males presented with duodenal bulbar ulcers. 84 patients [(females-38/54 (70.4%) and males-46/66 (85.2%)] of the total number of 120 examined patients were found to have chronic gastritis.In conclusion, we found that the incidence of PUD was more than 10 times higher in CKD patients than in those without CKD over a 3-year period between 2008-2010. CKD patients receiving HD, NSAID, or clopidogrel had an increased risk of PUD, compared to CKD patients not receiving these treatments.