Towards personalized fluid monitoring in haemodialysis patients: thoracic bioimpedance signal shows strong correlation with fluid changes, a cohort study

BACKGROUND: Haemodialysis (HD) patients are burdened by frequent fluid shifts which amplify their comorbidities. Bioimpedance (bioZ) is a promising technique to monitor changes in fluid status. The aim of this study is to investigate if the thoracic bioZ signal can track fluid changes during a HD session. METHODS: Prevalent patients from a single centre HD unit were monitored during one to six consecutive HD sessions using a wearable multi-frequency thoracic bioZ device. Ultrafiltration volume (UFV) was determined based on the interdialytic weight gain and target dry weight set by clinicians. The correlation between the bioZ signal and UFV was analysed on population level. Additionally regression models were built and validated per dialysis session. RESULTS: 66 patients were included, resulting in a total of 133 HD sessions. Spearman correlation between the thoracic bioZ and UFV showed a significant strong correlation of 0.755 (p < 0.01) on population level. Regression analysis per session revealed a strong relation between the bioZ value and the UFV (R(2) = 0.982). The fluid extraction prediction error of the leave-one-out cross validation was very small (56.2 ml [− 121.1–194.1 ml]) across all sessions at all frequencies. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated that thoracic bioZ is strongly correlated with fluid shifts during HD over a large range of UFVs. Furthermore, leave-one-out cross validation is a step towards personalized fluid monitoring during HD and could contribute to the creation of autonomous dialysis.