Home dialysis increases in United States regardless of patient race/ethnicity

In recent years, an increasing number of patients with ESKD began using home dialysis, according to a recently published study. This growth was seen among all racial and ethnic groups as racial/ethnic differences in initiating home dialysis narrowed.
“From 2005 to 2013, more people in the U.S. were started on home dialysis,” Jenny Shen, MD, MS, assistant professor of medicine at University of California, Los Angeles and investigator at the Los Angeles Biomedical Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, told Healio/Nephrology. “Historically, minority patients have been less likely to use home dialysis than non-Hispanic white patients.” To determine whether the recent growth in home dialysis use was proportional among all racial/ethnic groups, researchers conducted an observational cohort study of 523,526 patients with ESKD, analyzing data from the United States Renal Data System. Also considered were factors related to geographical location (eg, neighborhood variables, urban or rural, hospital service area-levels of access to health care and number of dialysis facilities).--> READ MORE