Continuous Ambulatory Peritoneal Dialysis in Children

To the Editor: The report by Baum et al. (Dec. 16 issue)* provides important evidence that long-term ambulatory peritoneal dialysis is a satisfactory method of treatment for some children with chronic renal failure. Although the authors were appropriately conservative in their conclusions and clearly did not claim important advantages of ambulatory dialysis over hemodialysis, it is likely that the results will be interpreted to suggest that there are certain physiologic advantages of ambulatory dialysis. Two problems in the analysis of the data could give rise to these misconceptions. First of all, the technique of hemodialysis entails the intermittent removal of.