Survival rates in an unconventional haemodialysis strategy after a 10 year follow-up period.

Abstract

At the end of the last century, level II scientific evidence supported higher survival rates for alternative haemodialysis (HD) techniques when compared with conventional HD, whose five-year life expectancy in Europe was below 40%. Our incident patients participated in an unconventional HD strategy from the year 2000, with the aim of assessing its influence on survival. A cohort study on 183 incident HD patients between 2000 and 2010. At the beginning of HD, we evaluated a history of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and Charlson index (ChI). In the year 2000, we began the unconventional HD strategy that included protocols of biocompatible high flux HD, dry weight target, a schedule of three weekly five hour sessions (HD 5h x 3) and from 2003, in combination with the foregoing, we began a schedule of four hour HD sessions on alternate days including weekends (every other day dialysis: EODD) for higher risk incident patients. Of the 183 incident patients in the HD programme, 84 were dialysed in the 5hx3 HD schedule and 99 in EODD. The mean age was 60.6 ± 13.8 years, 31.7% were older than 70, 43% were diabetic, with CVD sufferers at 58.5% and the mean ChI was 4.55. Survival (%) from the first to the fifth year was 92, 82, 75, 62 and 55, with a median of 5.65 years (confidence interval [CI] 4.18-7.11) and a mean of 5.4 (CI 4.75-6.1). The unconventional HD strategy that we applied to incident patients in the technique resulted in good survival.