Mortality Comparison of Hemodialysis and Peritoneal Dialysis Patients at a Single Japanese Center

Abstract

To investigate whether peritoneal dialysis (PD) is useful as a first modality in Japan, where hemodialysis (HD) is used in 97% of all patients on maintenance dialysis, we used intention-to-treat (ITT) and as-treated analyses to examine patient survival at our center, where HD and PD are used almost equally. In the ITT analysis, survival was significantly better in the PD group than in the HD group (p = 0.009). Meanwhile, the as-treated analysis did not reveal any significant differences in survival between the HD and PD groups. Survival for patients who underwent combined therapy with PD and HD was very good at 93.75% after 4 years, despite a young age of introduction (56 years). Our results confirm the usefulness of PD as an initial modality of maintenance dialysis and indicate that combined therapy can serve as a useful treatment option for dialysis patients.