Today I had a big drop in blood pressure the third hour of treatment-- I went down to 51/29. How low can you go and still come back?

Hi, Dialyzin' Dar:

Your blood pressure can drop dangerously low and you still 'come out ok', but damage can - and does - occur when this happens.

I can not tell you an exact blood pressure where return to baseline is impossible. That is going to depend on your overall well being, and other comorbid conditions going on with you.

Do you - or your health care team - now what caused the blood pressure drop? That would be of greater concern to me, so that all could be done to help prevent that in the future.

Let us know,
Carol

I have wondered the same thing. I crashed twice in dialysis and it was pretty scarey. I crashed because at the time, I wasn't educated on my txs and didn't know that my dry weight was overlooked when it needed to be adjusted. I see patients in dialysis crash every tx.! I have worried a great deal about them, because I know they are ignorant of why they are crashing as I once was. It is amazing to me that bp drops which can be life threatening are regarded as nothing especially important in this unit. Obviously, the techs and RNs we have either aren't trained or aren't doing their jobs right for some reason.

I have pkd and still produce urine so bp dropping because of fluid withdrawal isn't yet a problem for me. My bp was still dropping too low for me ( I would start to feel really tiried, and yawn uncontrollably). They did sodium modeling on me, which worked pretty well. Also, I was on a bp med. (calcium channel blocker) prior to starting dialysis. In fact, the dose had been doubled prior to treatments starting. Recently my neph. cut the dose in half. Now my bp doesn't go too low. Another plus is that my ankles aren't swollen either. I had peripheral edema for years since being put on bp meds.. Lin.