[Regular dialytic treatment in the Piedmont region. Results and prospects]

The Piedmont planning for the prevention and treatment of chronic uremia started in 1976, with the purpose to extending full treatment of the whole region, through the development of home and self care dialysis and intensive use of hospital short dialysis. Hospital dialysis would be reserved either for new treatments or complicated or uncooperative patients. Thank to an intensive exploitation of the existing hospital centers, a 68.7% increment in the number of treated patients was achieved and costs were kept down to a limited acceptable range. With the development of home and self care dialysis, 27% of the patients were located in out-of-hospital centers, and 17% at home. The Piedmont planning concerned itself with the patients' data collected by the Regional Registry under the following items: a) characteristics of dialysis population; b) the present modes of treatment; c) the number of patients apt to varying treatments and renal transplantation; d) the epidemiology of uremia causing nephropathies. At the present time results are only preliminary. Nevertheless, the first observations showed a long and difficult work with good possibilities of success for computerized facilities in the field of dialysis, particularly in respect to regional areas which in the reformed Health Service are now considered to be operating as autonomous.