A team of researchers led by Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center nephrologist Dr. Michael Rocco has received a US$3.3 million grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health to compare the effectiveness of home dialysis to in-center dialysis.
This is good news for end-stage renal disease patients like me because, as Rocco noted, “the death rate of patients receiving chronic dialysis therapy in the United States remains unacceptably high, in the range of 15 to 20 percent per year.”
At least 150 patients will participate in the study; half on daily overnight dialysis at home and half on three-times-weekly in-center dialysis. Home dialysis patients spend significantly more time connected to the dialysis machine (six to nine hours six nights each week) than in-center patients (three to five hours three times each week). As a result, home dialysis patients receive a dialysis dose that’s two or three times greater than in-center patients. Rocco’s team will study whether a higher dialysis dose results in lower blood pressure, better blood chemistry, less restrictive diet, better quality of life, and less time spent in the hospital for permanent kidney failure patients.
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