Hemodialysis without Systemic Anticoagulation: A Prospective Randomized Trial to Evaluate 3 Strategies in Patients at Risk of Bleeding

Objective In this clinical trial, we aimed to compare three means of performing chronic hemodialysis in patients with contra-indication to systemic heparinization. Methods This open-label monocentric randomized « n-of-one » trial, conducted in a single tertiary care center, recruited chronic hemodialysis patients with a contra-indication to systemic heparinization for at least 3 consecutive sessions. All patients underwent hemodialysis with an AN69ST dialyzer, and were administered three alternative dialysis procedures in a random sequence: intermittent saline flushes, constant saline infusion, or pre-dialysis heparin coating of the membrane. The primary outcome was the need to interrupt the dialysis session because of clotting events due to either (i) a complete coagulation of the circuit; (ii) a partial coagulation of the circuit; (iii) a>50% rise over baseline in the venous pressure. Results At the end of the inclusion period (May, 2007 to December, 2008), the number of patients to include (n = 75) was not reached: only 46 patients were included and underwent randomization. The study was terminated, and statistical analysis took into account 224 hemodialysis sessions performed in 44 patients with analyzable data. Heparin adsorption was associated with a significant reduction of the need to interrupt the dialysis session because of clotting events: odds ratio 0.3 (CI 95% 0.2 to 0.6; p 3 h dialysis sessions and for having complete blood restitution. There were no significant effects of the dialysis procedure on weight loss, online ionic dialysance, and adverse events. Conclusion Heparin-coated AN69ST dialysis membrane is a safe and effective method to avoid or delay per-dialytic clotting events in patients with contra-indication to systemic anticoagulation. However, results are not generalizable safely to patients with active bleeding, since weak heparinemia, not assessed in this study, may occur. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00473109.