Evolution of the single-pool urea kinetic model.

Our interest in urea kinetic modeling (UKM) was stimulated some 30 years ago at the time of the advent of hollow fiber kidneys with greatly improved urea transport. This led to examination of the interaction between time and clearance in computing the dialysis dose. In early studies a fixed-volume single-pool UKM was used but this frequently gave spurious high volumes and led to the advent of the variable-volume single-pool model. The role of volume calculation in assessment of the delivered dialysis dose and the value of normalized protein catabolic rate (nPCR) calculation are reviewed. More recently quantification of double-pool effects has become simplified and now is widely used for UKM. The National Cooperative Dialysis Study (NCDS) resulted in the concept of dose quantification by Kt/V. This is reviewed, including the controversy surrounding interpretation of the NCDS. Currently there is great interest in more frequent dialysis, 4-6 days/week. The development of a new dose parameter, the standard Kt/V (stdKt/V), to enable quantitative comparison of dose with widely varying dose schedules is discussed.