Briefly Noted

Abstract

Cerebral ischemia, measured during 635 HD sessions in 58 patients, was common (24% of treatments) and usually (32%) asymptomatic. 1It was associated with hypotension but was not easily predicted by BP level. Decreased executive cognitive function at 12 months correlated with ischemia but not low BP.A study of apixaban pharmacokinetics in HD patients found that a dose of 2.5 mg twice daily was equivalent to a 5 mg dose twice daily in patients with normal renal function. 2A low systolic BP in patients transitioning to chronic HD was associated with a substantially higher adjusted mortality in these patients when they were later on HD.3 The study assessed mean BP in the 1-year pre-HD period in 17,729 US veterans; there were 2.4-fold and 2.0-fold increases in all-cause mortality for systolic BP values of