Survival Advantage of Peritoneal Dialysis Relative to Hemodialysis in the Early Period of Incident Dialysis Patients: A Nationwide Prospective Propensity-Matched Study in Korea

The impact of dialysis modality on survival is still somewhat controversial. Given possible differences in patients’ characteristics and the cause and rate of death in different countries, the issue needs to be evaluated in Korean cohorts.A nationwide prospective observational cohort study (NCT00931970) was performed to compare survival between peritoneal dialysis (PD) and hemodialysis (HD). A total of 1,060 end-stage renal disease patients in Korea who began dialysis between September 1, 2008 and June 30, 2011 were followed through December 31, 2011. = 0.022), respectively. Patients on PD had a 51% lower risk of death compared to those on HD (HR 0.49, 95% CI 0.25–0.97).PD exhibits superior survival to HD in the early period of dialysis, even after adjusting for differences in the patients’ characteristics between the two modalities. Notably, the most common cause of death was infection in this Korean cohort