[Clinical characteristics and indicators of care of dialysis patients]

This chapter provides a set of indicators on patients treated by dialysis at December the 31th 2011. Even if ESRD is found in all classes of age, elders account for the great majority of the patients undergoing dialysis (median age: 70.4 years). These patients present a high rate of comorbidity especially diabetes (37% of patients) and cardiovascular comorbidities (59% of patients) that increases with the patient's age. Considering indicators of care, the main dialysis technique was hemodialysis (93.3% of patients). Even if an important inter-region variability remains considering the choices of treatment, more than 50% of the patients are undergoing hemodialysis in a hospital-based in-center unit, and we noticed an increase in hemodialysis in a medical satellite unit with time whereas the rate of self-care hemodialysis decreases. The rate of peritoneal dialysis remains stable. When comparing guidelines to real-life treatments, 77.5% of patients receive adequate dose of treatment (12H/week, KT/V>1.2), the rate of patients with a hemoglobin blood-level lower than 10 g/dl and without erythropoietin treatment is 1.3%, which confirmed a good management of anemia. On the contrary, 34% of patients have a BMI lower than 23 kg/m(2) and only 23% have an albumin blood-level over 40 g/l, which underlines that nutritional management of ESRD patients can be improved.