As I mentioned in my first post, I have been doing home hemo for four and a half years. Over that length over of time I have certainly had my share of saline and dialysate leaks.

Save yourself a lot of grief and tighten every connection each time you use a cartridge. 95% of the time the plastic connectors will be tightened at the factory, but when one comes loose during the prime process, you will leak saline in or on the NxStage unit. Of course, you can clear the error and clean up, but it’s a lot easier to just prevent this problem by re-tightening ALL the connections on the cartridge every time you use one.

The same is true for making a new batch of dialysate. The “chicken-foot” connection is connected to the dialysate SAK with a single connector, my experience has been that more times than not, this connection has not been tightened and must be before you continue making the SAK. If you don’t, you will eventually get a dialysate leak, which can be a lot of grief to correct.

I also tighten all three connectors on the end of the “chicken-foot”. Over the last few years I have never had one come loose, but over the last few months I have had two of them blown off during the completion of snap-and-tap, resulting in the loss of dialysate fluid.

Last, and most important, check that the caps on both of your needle lines are tight. I have even inserted a needle to find that there was no cap on the end, blood everywhere. As soon as I remove the needle sets from their packing I check that the cap on each line is tight.

One more tip – when you run from premixed dialysate bags, save the plastic screw-on caps from each of the bags you connect. They can come in handy in the future when you have a leak, and the cap you lost is rolling around on the floor.