In the Comfort of Your Own Home

New findings show that home-based dialysis may suit some kidney transplant failure patients.

The study is to be published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

After a kidney transplant failure, patients must go back to dialysis. These patients have a greater risk of complications than other dialysis patients because they have been on dialysis for such a long time and have been taking extremely strong immunosuppressive drugs.

The study's authors found that, even with the added potential for complications, patients who have experienced a kidney transplant failure are fit for home-based dialysis because they already are used to managing their own therapy. However, many patients of transplant failure choose not to receive dialysis treatment at home.

According to 2007 statistics, a total of 368,544 United States residents with ESRD underwent dialysis. However, only 26,364 (about 7 percent) of those patients underwent home-based dialysis.

Jeffrey Perl, M.D., from St. Michael's Hospital at the University of Toronto, and colleagues compared the effects of home-based versus clinic-based dialysis. After studying the cases of 2,110 patients who experienced kidney transplant failure, the researchers found that survival rates of patients who underwent home-based dialysis was similar to the rates of those receiving clinic-based dialysis.

According to Dr. Perl, these findings should give some optimism to patients returning to dialysis. Although it is disheartening to have a transplant failure, this study shows that patients have the option to undergo dialysis in the comfort of their homes with results that are as effective as those in a clinic.