Kidney transplant patients live longer than those in intensive home haemodialysis

A first-ever study from a large Canadian centre found that kidney transplant recipients lived longer and had better treatment success than patients on intensive home haemodialysis, but also had an increased risk of being hospitalised within the first year.
These findings were reported in a study entitled, ‘Survival and hospitalization for intensive home hemodialysis and kidney transplantation’, by lead author Dr. Karthik Tennankore, nephrologist at Dalhousie University, and Drs. Chris Chan and Joseph Kim, nephrologists at Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network.
The research reaffirms the need to encourage patients receiving intensive home haemodialysis to pursue kidney transplantation as a definitive treatment option for end-stage kidney disease. However, the study also found that the outcomes for these specific dialysis patients were generally positive, especially when compared to patients on in-centre haemodialysis (intensive home haemodialysis patient survival was 94% and 80% at one and five years).
‘For patients with end-stage kidney disease, a kidney transplant is still the best treatment option,’ says Dr. Chris Chan, Deputy Director, Division of Nephrology, University Health Network, R. Fraser Elliott Chair in Home Dialysis and Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Toronto. ‘But not everyone is a candidate for a transplant and we are facing a shortage of organs for these patients. We must continue to study and develop new and better ways to bridge the gap, and that includes developing better dialysis treatments.’
Dialysis will continue to be an important treatment option for many patients, points out Dr. Karthik Tennankore, Division of Nephrology, Dalhousie University. ‘This study also tells us that patients who are receiving this type of dialysis still have very good health outcomes.’
Due to long waiting times for kidney transplants