PERITONEAL DIALYSIS IN ELDERLY PATIENTS: CLINICAL EXPERIENCE

Many older patients do not cope well with hemodialysis, yet the proportion of older patients on peritoneal dialysis (PD) is considerably lower than for younger patients. This is despite the fact that clinical outcome studies show that older patients cope as well as, if not better than, younger patients on PD. Furthermore, the North Thames Dialysis Study, a prospective study of patients ‡ 7 0 years old, has shown that survival, hospitalization, and quality of life were identical for patients on hemodialysis and patients on PD. Perit Dial Int 2004; 24(S3):S88–S91 www.PDIConnect.com KEY WORDS: Elderly patients; survival; quality of life. Renal failure is becoming a disease of the elderly popu-lation. The number of elderly people in Western coun-tries is rising and the demographics of renal disease have changed. The major causes of renal disease now are as-sociated with diabetes, hypertension, and generalized vascular disease. As cardiovascular risk is better man-aged in the general population, people live longer, with many developing renal disease in old age. A proportion will progress to end-stage renal disease (ESRD) requir-ing dialysis. In the United Kingdom, the median age of patients starting renal replacement therapy has risen from 64.4 years in 2000 to 65.5 years in 2002 (1). De-spite the elderly population being the largest, and grow-ing, group of patients on dialysis, they are less likely to be started on peritoneal dialysis (PD). In the UK, whe