Assisted peritoneal dialysis and transfer to haemodialysis: a cause-specific analysis with data from the RDPLF

Technique failure, defined as death or transfer to haemodialysis (HD), is a major concern in peritoneal dialysis (PD). Nurse-assisted PD is globally associated with a lower risk of transfer to HD. We aimed to evaluate the association between assisted PD and the risk of the different causes of transfer to HD.

This was a retrospective study using data from the French Language PD Registry of patients on incident PD from 2006 to 2015. The association between the use of assisted PD and the causes of transfer to HD was evaluated using survival analysis with competing events in unmatched and propensity score-matched cohorts.

The study included 11 093 incident PD patients treated in 123 French PD units. There were 4273 deaths, 3330 transfers to HD and 2210 renal transplantations. The causes of transfer to HD were inadequate dialysis (1283), infection (524), catheter-related problems (334), social issues (250), other causes linked to PD (422), other causes not linked to PD (481) and encapsulating peritoneal sclerosis (6). Nurse-assisted PD patients were older and more comorbid. Assistance by nurse was associated with a higher risk of death [cause-specific hazard ratio (cs-HR) 2.49, 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.26-2.74], but with a lower risk of transfer to HD [subdistributionHR (sd-HR) 0.68, 95% CI 0.62-0.76], especially due to inadequate dialysis (cs-HR 0.83, 95% CI 0.75-0).

The lower risk of transfer to HD associated with nurse assistance should encourage decision makers to launch reimbursement programmes in countries where it is not available.