Peritoneal dialysis and peritonitis rate: Kuwait, four years' experience

Peritoneal dialysis (PD) program was established in Farwaniya Hospital Kidney Center, Kuwait, in February 2011. Patient recruitment for this modality of treatment was growing steadily. One of the major complications of PD is peritonitis. There is a belief that PD therapy is inferior and carries more complications than hemodialysis, we aimed to show that PD is a good and a non-inferior option for dialysis therapy with comparable outcome in both patient and technique survival. This was a retrospective analysis of all patients who were on PD from February 2011 to December 2014. Peritonitis rate, exit site infection rate, and all-cause mortality rate were all assessed for this period. Peritonitis rate during the 1 st year, 2011, was 0.92 incidents/year. This number had progressively declined in the following years; in 2012, it was 0.65 incidents/year; in 2013, it was 0.58 incidents/year; and in 2014, it was 0.38 incidents/year. This improvement in the rate of peritonitis incidence could be explained by better education of patients and meticulous supervision of the nursing staff. Farwaniya Hospital Kidney Center had an all-cause mortality rate of 9.3% among patients on renal replacement therapy in 2011. In 2012, all-cause mortality rate increased to 17.1%. The following year, 2013, it decreased to 14.3%, and in 2014, all-cause mortality rate dropped further to 7.6%. All-cause mortality rate among PD patients was zero in 2011. In 2012, the all-cause mortality rate in PD was 11.54%, and in 2013, it decreased to 10.52%. Then, again in 2014, the all-cause mortality rate among PD patients was zero. This improvement in all-cause mortality rate could be explained by the better medical care offered to the end-stage renal disease patients, in particular PD patients, in Farwaniya Hospital Kidney Center.