Meta-analysis: effect of hepatitis C virus infection on mortality in dialysis

Background: The natural history of hepatitis C virus infection among patients on long-term dialysis treat-ment remains incompletely understood. Efforts to elu-cidate the natural history of hepatitis C virus in this population are difficult because of the slowly progressive nature of hepatitis C virus with often an unrecognized onset in patients whose life-expectancy is substantially diminished by end-stage renal disease. Aim: To conduct a systematic review of the published medical literature concerning the impact of hepatitis C virus infection on the survival of patients receiving chronic dialysis. The relative risk of mortality was regarded as the most reliable outcome end-point. Methods: We used the random effects model of DerSi-monian and Laird to generate a summary estimate o