The Prevalence of Peritonitis among Pediatric Peritoneal Dialysis Patients at Large Saudi Center

Peritonitis is a common and serious complication of peritoneal dialysis (PD) and it is a direct or major contributing cause of death in around 16% of PD patients. Severe or prolonged peritonitis leads to structural and functional alterations of the peritoneal membrane, eventually leading to membrane failure, PD technique failure, and conversion to long-term hemodialysis (HD). This is cross-sectional record-based study in which the records of all children aged <14 years with end-stage renal disease on PD either on coiled or straight PD catheter had been reviewed at pediatric nephrology department in a tertiary care hospital, Riyadh, over the period of three years from 2017 to 2019. All information was collected using a structured data collection form. Our study had 30 patients on automated PD with 10 females (33.3%) and 20 males (66.7%) during the study period. The age ranged from 11 months to 14 years with a median 5.5 years, all of them were new to dialysis. A total of 11 out of 30 patients had multiple episodes of PD-associated peritonitis and the prevalence of peritonitis among the 30 patients was 37%. Peritoneal fluid cultures were positive in 100% episodes. Gram-positive, Gram-negative, and fungal organisms were identified in 72.7%, 18.1%, and 9.0% episodes, respectively. The analysis showed the exit-site infection (ESI) to be a risk factor to develop peritonitis, where 21 patients out of 30 had at least one ESI, 52% end by peritonitis in coiled catheter group. No mortality among our cohort of patients was noted, even removal of or changing PD catheter and transfer to HD. Our data showed that the prevalence of peritonitis secondary to ESI with Gram-positive organisms was significantly high, especially in coiled catheter group.