Is 3-compartment bioimpedance spectroscopy useful to assess body composition in renal transplant patients?

Application of Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis in Nutritional Management of Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease

Body composition measurement plays an important role in the nutritional diagnosis and treatment of diseases. In the past 30 years, the detection of body composition based on bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) has been widely used and explored in a variety of diseases. With the development of technology, bioelectrical impedance analysis has gradually developed from single-frequency BIA (SF-BIA) to multi-frequency BIA (multi-frequency BIA, MF-BIA) and over a range of frequencies (bioimpedance spectroscopy, BIS). As the clinical significance of nutrition management in chronic kidney disease has gradually become prominent, body composition measurement by BIA has been favored by nephrologists and nutritionists. In the past 20 years, there have been many studies on the application of BIA in patients with CKD. This review describes and summarizes the latest research results of BIA in nutritional management of patients with CKD including pre-dialysis, hemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis and kidney transplantation, in order to provide reference for the application and research of BIA in nutritional management of chronic kidney disease in the future.

Comparison of Body Composition Monitor and InBody 720 Bioimpedance Devices for Body Composition Estimation in Hemodialysis Patients and Healthy Controls

Bioelectric impedance devices have become a standard of care not only for peritoneal dialysis but also for hemodialysis patients. We compared the most important body composition variables (extracellular water, intracellular water, total body water and fat mass) measured with the multifrequency bioelectric impedance device InBody 720 (MF-BIA) and bioimpedance spectroscopy body composition monitor Fresenius (BIS BCM) in hemodialysis patients (n = 51, 175.1 + 7.8 cm, 82.2 + 15.2 kg) and healthy controls (n = 51, 175.1 + 7.6 cm, 82.3 + 15.3 kg). The MF-BIA InBody 720 device compared to the BIS BCM device showed significantly larger total body water and intracellular water estimates and significantly smaller extracellular water and body fat estimates in hemodialysis patients (p < 0.001). These differences (p < 0.001) were similar in the cohort of healthy controls; moreover, we observed high correlations in all variables between the hemodialysis patients and the healthy controls (0.80–0.95, p < 0.001). The mean relative differences in the order of 8% were lower for extracellular water and total body fat, but the limits of agreement were still wide enough to be clinically significant. We conclude that the results of the measurements with InBody 720 and BCM Fresenius cannot be used interchangeably. Physicians and nutritionists involved in the care of hemodialysis patients should be aware of this discrepancy between the two devices and should try to use the same device to track the body in their hemodialysis population in a longitudinal direction.

Comparison of Skinfold Thicknesses and Bioimpedance Spectroscopy to Dual-Energy X-Ray Absorptiometry for the Body Fat Measurement in Patients With Chronic Kidney Disease

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES

The aim of the study was to compare the amount of body fat measured by skinfold thickness (SFT) and bioimpedance spectroscopy (BIS) with dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) as a reference method.

METHODS

Forty-eight patients undergoing hemodialysis treatment thrice-weekly for at least 3 months (HD group) with a mean age of 59.8 ± 15.5 years, 61 patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) with an estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) <30 mL/min/1.73 m² and a mean age of 60.1 ± 17.7 years (predialysis group, PreD), and 33 individuals without kidney disease with an eGFR >60 mL/min/1.73 m² and a mean age of 58.7 ± 17.0 years (control group) were included.

RESULTS

Mean percentages of body fat measured by SFT did not significantly differ from those measured by DXA in the HD group ( P = .249) and the PreD group ( P = .355). In the control group, mean percentage of fat mass measured by SFT was significantly higher than measured by DXA ( P = .004). Mean difference was 1.99% ± 3.65%. The measurements of body fat performed by BIS were significantly higher than those performed by DXA in all studied groups ( P < .001). Age was statistically significant and the strongest factor that influenced the variability of measurements obtained by BIS and DXA in all studied groups ( R² = 0.302, 0.153, and 0.250, respectively, for HD, PreD, and control groups).

CONCLUSIONS

SFT as a method of fat mass assessment in daily routine practice seems to be more reliable then BIS in patients treated with hemodialysis and in patients with stage IV/V CKD. However, methods based on bioimpedance techniques can potentially offer more data such as overhydration or an amount of lean tissue mass, but further investigations are needed to establish method the most suitable for patients with CKD.