Abstract

• Since its first introduction by Popovich in 1976. Continuous Ambulatory Peritoneal Dialysis(CAPD) has estabilished itself as an effective method maintaining the patients with end stage renal disease. But recurrent peritonitis remains the most frequent cause of the CAPD failure. So clinical studies were carried on the 15 patients on CAPD who had been treated from June 1989 to march 1991.
  The following results were obtained.
  1) The incidence of peritonitis was 1.73 episode/patient/year.
  2) Peritonitis incidence according to the sex showed 1.93 episode/patient/year with female patients and l.46 episode/patient/year with male patients.
  3) Peritonitis incidence according to the underlying disease showed 1.94 episode/patient/year with diabetic patients and 1.45 episode/patient/year with non-diabetic patients.
  4) The subjective symptom and sign were as follows; abdominal pain(95%). cloudy dialysate(95%). nausea(55%), abdominal tenderness(95%). decreased dialysate drainage (59%), fever(50%), and peripheral leukocytosis(18%).
  5) The positive rate in Gram stain of dialysate drainage fluid was 13.6% and the positive rate in culture was 31.8%. of which staphylococcus was 42.9%.
  6) The rate of catheter removal due to peritonitis was 22.7%. The most common cause was persistent peritonitis, which accounted for 60% of cases. And all cases of catheter removal were developed in female patients.
  7) The complications related to catheter were as follows ; catheter exit site infection(20%), external cuff extrusion(20%), leakage of dialysate fluid(6.7%) and crack on Tenckhoff catheter(6.7%)