A longitudinal study of the cognitive function of children with renal failure.

Fifty-six children with chronic renal failure who either received a kidney transplant, were hemodialyzed or peritoneally dialyzed, or who were being medically managed were given a series of neuropsychological tests every 6 months for a total of four testing sessions. Each child was matched by age, sex, and race to healthy children who received the same sequence of tests. The performance of each treatment group was compared with their controls longitudinally, using a repeated measure analysis of variance. In general, renal subjects performed at lower levels than their controls on tasks of verbal ability, visual perception, memory and visual motor skills. Visual motor performance was the most clinically affected. When compared with controls, the renal subjects did not improve as much or actually deteriorated on some measures of memory and learning skills.