Advance Access publication 13 October 2006 Which cardiovascular risk factors matter in chronic kidney disease?

haematocrit; randomized trials; risk factors Why measure risk factors for vascular disease? Identifying cardiovascular risk factors among patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) is poten-tially useful for two main reasons. First, such risk factors may be used to predict the future risk of an event, which may help physicians to plan treatment. Second, they may be targets for intervention to prevent such events. It is now clear that a large number of risk factors independently predict the risk of cardiovascular outcomes among dialysis patients [1] and among patients with lesser degrees of renal impairment [2]. But, although a risk score based on independent risk factors can be assembled without particular regard to whether they are causal, treatments which modif