Whether dialysis is the best option for kidney failure and, if so, when to start, may deserve more careful consideration, according to a new study.
Stanford Medicine Aug 19 2024
Montez Rath is the lead author on a study about dialysis, life expectancy and time at home to be published in Annals of Internal Medicine. Manjula Tamura, MD, a professor of nephrology, is the senior author. For those patients, physicians often recommend dialysis -; a treatment that cleans the blood like healthy kidneys would -; when patients progress to kidney failure. Patients are considered to have kidney failure when their estimated glomerular filtration rate , a measure of renal function, falls below 15.
Related StoriesThe team evaluated the health records, from 2010 to 2018, of 20,440 patients from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The patients were 65 and older, had chronic kidney failure, were not undergoing evaluation for transplant and had an eGFR below 12. Patients who never underwent dialysis on average died 77 days earlier than those who started dialysis immediately, but they spent 14 more days at home.
"Different patients will have different goals," she said. "For some it's a blessing to have this option of dialysis, and for others it might be a burden."
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