Why does low blood pressure occur?

• Ultrafiltration: Too fast and too much ultrafiltration. The majority of dialysis patients drink too much water that increases the ultrafiltration speed. The ideal dry weight of dialysis patients may be underestimated. These factors often contribute to the reduction of effective blood volume and lower blood pressure.
• Abnormal vasoconstriction: anemia, atherosclerosis and autonomic neuropathy.
• Heart disease.
• Diabetes mellitus.
• Take hypotensive agent before dialysis.

Symptoms

• Yawning, sleepiness, blurred vision, palpitations, rapid pulse, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, muscular spasm.
• In severe cases: pale face, cold sweat, difficult breathing, chest pain, cardiac arrhythmia, loss of consciousness.

Preventions

• Avoid excessive interdialysis weight gain.
• Do not take hypotensive agent before dialysis in general.
• Improve anemia by taking proper amount of iron and use EPO.
• Improve nutrition.