Dr. Chris Chan, Deputy Director, Division of Nephrology, UHN, R. Fraser Elliott Chair in Home Dialysis. (Photo: Chris Chan)
A first-ever study from a large Canadian centre found that kidney transplant recipients lived longer and had better treatment success than patients on intensive home hemodialysis, but also had an increased risk of being hospitalized within the first year.
These findings were reported in a study entitled, "Survival and hospitalization for intensive home hemodialysis and kidney transplantation", by lead author Dr. Karthik Tennankore, nephrologist at Dalhousie University, and Drs. Chris Chan and Joseph Kim, nephrologists at Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network. The study was published online on May 22, 2014 in the
Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN).
Dr. Joseph Kim is the Co-Director of the Kidney Transplant Program at Toronto General Hospital, UHN
The research reaffirms the need to encourage patients receiving intensive home hemodialysis to pursue kidney transplantation as a definitive treatment option for end-stage kidney disease. However, the study also found that the outcomes for these specific dialysis patients were generally positive, especially when compared to patients on in-centre hemodialysis (intensive home hemodialysis patient survival was 94 per cent and 80 per cent at one and five years).
Read the full press release on UHN.ca
