HealthDay News – Kidney transplantation is associated with higher treatment and patient survival rates compared with intensive home hemodialysis (IHHD; ≥16 hours/week), according to researchers.
“IHHD patients had a lower hospitalization rate in the first year of treatment compared with standard criteria donor recipients and in the first 3 months of treatment compared with living donor and expanded criteria donor recipients,” wrote Karthik K. Tennankore, MD, and colleagues from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. Their findings were published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
Inspectors retrospectively analyzed data from consecutive IHHD patients and kidney transplant recipients (treated at a tertiary care center from 2000 to 2011). Outcomes for 173 IHHD patients were compared with outcomes for 1,517 transplant recipients (673 living donor, 642 standard criteria donor, and 202 expanded criteria donor recipients).
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There was a reduced risk of treatment failures or deaths in transplant recipients compared to IHHD patients (relative hazard for living donor recipients, 0.45; for standard criteria donor recipients, 0.39; and for expanded criteria donor recipients, 0.42). There were 285 treatment failures or deaths.
“Kidney transplantation was associated with superior treatment and patient survival, but higher early rates of hospitalization, compared with IHHD,” concluded the researchers.
