Peritonitis and exit-site
infections are the main causes of complications in
peritoneal dialysis. Death due to infectious complication is also one of the major causes of drop-out. The underlying cause of
infection may include
malnutrition. Total
creatinine appearance (TCA) may reflect overall nutritional status. We determined TCA from the daily
dialysate, urine, and estimated gut
creatinine of patients and normalized it to actual
body weight (
nTCA). We examined the relationship between
nTCA and the incidence of
infection, and between
nTCA and
infection-related survival. The study included 323 adult patients in a single dialysis center. The mean
nTCA of all patients was 19.73 +/- 4.75 mg/kg/day. The patients with an
nTCA below 1 standard deviation from the mean (
nTCA < 14.98 mg/kg/day) had a significantly higher
peritonitis and exit-site
infection rate (p < 0.01) and a higher chance of drop-out owing to
infection-related complications (p < 0.0001). Our study concluded that the adult patient with
malnutrition (
nTCA < 14.98 mg/kg/day) has higher risk of
infection.