The effects of various modes of therapy for end stage renal disease on cognitive performance in a pediatric population--a preliminary report.

Visuomotor, visuoanalytic, vigilance, and verbal memory functions of sixty-eight children and adolescents with renal disease were assessed. All patients with renal disease either had successful kidney transplants, were receiving dialysis therapy by hemodialysis or continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD), or had advanced renal failure not yet requiring dialysis. The patients showed a deficit in visuomotor skills related to attentional and visuoanalytic function. The transplant recipients appeared to be the least affected. Children undergoing dialysis therapy by CAPD or who had received a successful kidney transplant showed better performance on vigilance and memory tasks than the patients who received therapy by hemodialysis. There were correlations in all groups between performance on the memory tasks and performance on the vigilance tasks suggesting that the memory dysfunction in uremia is related in part to an attentional deficit.