Kidney Disease Quality of Life 36-Item Short Form Survey (KDQOL-36) Normative Values for the United States Dialysis Population and New Single Summary Score.

Background: The Kidney Disease Quality of Life 36-item short form survey (KDQOL-36) is a widely used, patient-reported outcome measure for patients on dialysis. Efforts to aid interpretation are needed.

Methods: We used a sample of 58,851 dialysis patients participating in the Medical Education Institute (MEI) KDQOL Complete program, and 443,947 patients from the US Renal Data System (USRDS) to develop the KDQOL-36 Summary Score (KSS) for the kidney-targeted KDQOL-36 scales (Burdens of Kidney Disease [BKD], Symptoms and Problems of Kidney Disease [SPKD], and Effects of Kidney Disease [EKD]).

Insights into nephrologist training, clinical practice, and dialysis choice.

There is variable emphasis on dialysis-specific training among US nephrology fellowship programs. Our study objective was to determine the association between nephrology training experience and subsequent clinical practice. We conducted a national survey of clinical nephrologists using a fax-back survey distributed between March 8, 2010 and April 30, 2010 (N = 629).