Nine out of 10 Americans on dialysis spend long hours at clinics hooked up to blood-cleaning machines, but a survey of new patients released on Tuesday found they preferred a little-used dialysis method that can be done at home.
The alternative method, peritoneal dialysis, inserts fluid into the patient’s abdomen through a surgically implanted catheter and uses the patient’s own tissues to filter out toxins and excess fluid from the blood.
The four-times-daily, 30-minute procedure can be done at home or at work, or at night while the patient sleeps.
But more than 90 percent of U.S. dialysis patients undergo hemodialysis, which usually requires three trips a week to a clinic for three- to four-hour sessions hooked up to a machine, the report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association said.
The survey of nearly 700 dialysis patients after seven weeks of treatment found 85 percent of peritoneal dialysis patients rated their care as excellent, compared to 56 percent of hemodialysis patients.
“That’s why this study is so striking ... patients who are on peritoneal dialysis rate their care much higher than those who are on hemodialysis and yet we have fewer patients who are on peritoneal dialysis in this country,” said Dr. Neil Powe of Johns Hopkins, who helped conduct the survey.
The reason hemodialysis is more commonly used is because more physicians are familiar with it, researchers said.
Peritoneal dialysis is more commonly used in Canada, Denmark and some other European nations than in the United States, James Heaf of Herlev University Hospital in Herlev, Denmark, wrote in an accompanying editorial.
He said use of peritoneal dialysis was declining in the United States — down to 7.5 percent of new patients in 2001.
To reverse the trend, Heaf suggested funding be directed at changing common practices and training physicians to inform patients of the option.
