IN THE NEWS: Dialysis Time

Interesting article in Kidney Internationa looking dialysis time (in-center, thrice weekly) comparing standard 4hours to shorter treatment and looking at outcomes. They found that patients with shorter treatment times had higher all cause mortality at 1 year, and this was a potentially independent variable.

The study design was observational in nature, looking at session length as a time varying exposure (rather than just baseline), and looking at only incident patients. Finally they analyzed the data to adjust for time varying confounders.

The article also suggests reasons as to why this might be (all reasons we would expect). Although recent studies suggest more dialysis does not translate to significant clinical outcomes in the setting of AKI, chronic dialysis seems to benefit from more dialysis (e.g. nocturnal dialysis)