In-hospital mortality among incident hemodialysis older patients in Peru

BACKGROUND: Understanding the pattern of mortality linked to end stage renal disease (ESRD) is important given the increasing ageing population in low- and middle-income countries.

METHODS: We analyzed older patients with ESRD with incident hemodialysis, from January 2012 to August 2017 in one large general hospital in Peru. Individual and health system-related variables were analyzed using Generalized Linear Models (GLM) to estimate their association with in-hospital all-cause mortality. Relative risk (RR) with their 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were calculated.

RESULTS: We evaluated 312 patients; mean age 69 years, 93.6% started hemodialysis with a transient central venous catheter, 1.7% had previous hemodialysis indication and 24.7% died during hospital stay. The mean length of stay was 16.1 days (SD 13.5). In the adjusted multivariate models, we found higher in-hospital mortality among those with encephalopathy (aRR 1.85, 95% CI 1.21-2.82 vs. without encephalopathy) and a lower in-hospital mortality among those with eGFR ≤7 mL/min (aRR 0.45, 95% CI 0.31-0.67 vs. eGFR>7 mL/min).

CONCLUSIONS: There is a high in-hospital mortality among older hemodialysis patients in Peru. The presence of uremic encephalopathy was associated with higher mortality and a lower estimated glomerular filtration rate with lower mortality.