Surgical aspects of the Tenckhoff peritoneal dialysis catheter. A 7 year experience.

The experience with CAPD using the Tenckhoff catheter in 115 patients over a 7 year period has been reviewed. The general indications for CAPD in the patient with chronic renal failure are the mental and physical ability of the patient or his relatives to perform CAPD. In our series, diabetes mellitus has been a relative indication for CAPD, because diabetic patients often have vascular disease severe enough to make long-term hemodialysis difficult. The general contraindications are abdominal problems such as hernias, abdominal wall infections, inflammatory bowel disease, adhesions, and gastrointestinal stomas. Other contraindications are lumbar disk disease and respiratory insufficiency. The surgical principles of catheter insertion have been described. Complications associated with the Tenckhoff catheter were either mechanical (intraabdominal organ injury, incisional hernia, catheter leakage, catheter occlusion, or catheter dislodgement), or infectious (peritonitis or abdominal wall infection). The single most common organism isolated from effluent dialysate in 65 patients with peritonitis was Staphylococcus epidermidis in six patients (9.2 percent), and in 20 patients (30.8 percent), no organism could be isolated. For those patients who had peritonitis, the average frequency was at 8.9 months of CAPD. There were only three deaths (3 percent) directly related to the Tenckhoff catheter and these were due to peritonitis and sepsis. Only 22 (19 percent) of the 115 patients in this series had to discontinue CAPD because of its ineffectiveness or the patient's or relative's inability to perform CAPD.