An Approach to the Statistical Analysis of Peritonitis Data from Patients on CAPD

Abstract

1. The distribution of peritoneal infections at any time during the CAPD program is random. This does not necessarily mean that the patients with high infection rates do not have identifiable characteristics that could be used in patient selection, but rather that these characteristics themselves could be randomly distributed among the patients. 2. The median time to first infection is about 260 days and is the same for males and females. 3. The median time between first and second infection is approximately 300 days. 4. The time to first infection and the infection rate per patient are negatively related to the calendar time of entry into the CAPD program, i.e., patients who entered the program later, tended to experience a lower infection rate. 5. The increase in risk of failure on the CAPD program for patients who have at least one infection in the first 90 to 150 days in the program is greater than three. 6. The increase in risk of failure on the CAPD program increases by at least 3% per annum, i.e., for each additional year on CAPD, the risk of failure increases over that of the previous year by 3%.