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William A. Nickey, DO; Voel L. Chinitz, MD; Kwan E. Kim, MD; Gaddo Onesti, MD; Charles Swartz, MD
Philadelphia

JAMA. 1970;214(5):915-916.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

In many parts of the country, naturally occurring concentrations of calcium and magnesium necessitate pretreatment of water before dialysis.¹ The following case is presented to describe a serious hypernatremia during home hemodialysis resulting from malfunction of a water softener.

Report of a Case.—

A 44-year-old man with uremia due to chronic glomerulonephritis had been treated by home hemodialysis since March 1967, performed with disposable twin-coil dialyzers in a single-canister, 100-liter tank. Water for dialysis is processed by an automatically cycled cation exchange resin water softener.

On April 3, 1970, after two hours of uneventful dialysis, just after a change of the dialysis bath, the patient suddenly felt flushed, developed severe pain in the neck and a headache, and complained of yellow vision. Following a period of profound thirst, he vomited and became combatitive and disoriented. Dialysis was discontinued approximately 10 to 15 minutes after the onset . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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