[Efficacy of a pre-dialysis clinic]

For many years now, the population in Quebec, Canada and other countries, counts more and more patients with renal insufficiency and also many more in need of dialysis treatments. In Quebec, there are 34 dialysis centres, mostly set in short term hospital settings. The two most standard treatments are haemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis. Dialysis centres are the most expensive to run and lack sufficient funding. Traditional haemodialysis treatments and their related costs sums up to 85,000 dollars, per patient, yearly. Terminally ill patients with chronic renal insufficiency represent a incompressible practice. If the number of patients keeps growing, at the actual rate, we will face a clientele increasing from 2200 to 5680 by the year 2006. In 1994, the Health and Social Welfare Ministry asked to three socio-sanitary regions to establish a prevention program structured in a way to help prevent and slow renal insufficiencies at every stages of the illness. This article describes this program and presents the results of a research made on the efficacy of these renal insufficiency clinics.