Challenges Facing the Parents of a Young Child Going Home on Peritoneal Dialysis

Challenges Facing the Parents of a Young Child Going Home on Peritoneal Dialysis
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Challenges Facing the Parents of a Young Child Going Home on Peritoneal Dialysis
Peritoneal dialysis (PD) can be carried out at home since no blood is involved. It adopts the use of a lining belly to filter out waste from the blood, a process taking 12 hours and should be done after every 24 hours. Even though most parents often prefer to conduct PD at home, it usually comes with various challenges. The first challenge parents often face handling the nutrition of children undergoing PD. Dieticians encourage patients undergoing PD to eat food containing high-quality proteins because they produce minimal waste. The patients are required to avoid processed proteins like sausages and hot dogs. Such dietary requirements might end up restricting children from eating certain food types, thereby interfering with their appetite. Parents may face difficulties adjusting to the new food requirements, such as their complicated recipes and extended preparation time (Sousa, 2022). The second challenge is that parents have to watch their children gain weight caused by the dialysis solution remaining in the belly of the child for long hours, making the body absorb more dextrose. The cause of subsequently increased body weight for the patients undergoing PD is diet. Research by Ng, 2022 shows that weight gain after the introduction to PD is not related to treatment but due to nutrition. However, obesity in children can negatively impact the parents and even end up causing stress.
Strategies to Address the Challenges
Through the help of a dietician, parents can limit weight gain in their children by using a cycler for exchanging the dialysis solution while the child is asleep. The essence of this practice is that the dwell time will be shortened, thus discouraging the body of the child from absorbing more fluids an...