[25 years of kidney replacement treatment at a general hospital]

Between February 1963 and January 1988, 174 patients were treated for acute and 307 for chronic renal failure by dialysis in the St. Joseph Hospital Eindhoven, a general hospital. Sixty-two per cent of the patients treated for acute renal failure had tubular necrosis as a cause. In the patients treated for end-stage renal disease the median age of the dialysis population increased from 37 to 62 years. Vascular renal disease and diabetes mellitus were more frequent during the last ten years. Because of the inflow of older people, the outflow by death increased strongly, while the outflow by transplantation remained stable during the last 15 years. Due to an active transplantation policy together with haemodialysis at home and CAPD, 66% of the total now living patient population could be discharged from the dialysis department. Infection and cardiovascular accidents were the major causes of morbidity and mortality among the dialysis and transplant patients. Overall survival curves of all treated patients showed a 5-year survival of 60% and a 10-year survival of 42%.