Peritoneal and hemodialysis: II. Mortality risk associated with initial patient characteristics.

Background: Patients initiating with peritoneal dialysis (PD) have favorable clinical conditions compared with hemodialysis (HD) patients, which may contribute to the varying results found in studies of mortality across the two therapies.

Methods: National incidence data of end-stage renal disease patients from 1995 to 1997 were used, excluding the first 90 days of treatment and including all patients who were on either PD or HD on day 91. Patients were then followed for a one-year period.

Peritoneal and hemodialysis: I. Differences in patient characteristics at initiation.

Background: Comparisons of mortality outcomes between peritoneal dialysis (PD) and hemodialysis (HD) patients have shown varying results, which may be caused by the unequally distributed clinical conditions of patients at initiation. To address this issue, we evaluated the clinical characteristics of 105,954 patients at the initiation of PD and HD, using the U.S.