Causes of hospitalization in patients on chronic hemodialysis

UNLABELLED: Patients taking dialysis regularly form a group with higher morbidity and mortality compared with common population. The risk factors of the hospitalization in future in these patients are supposed to be: older age, history of cardiovascular disease, comorbidity, vascular access other than arterio-venous fistula, certain types of nephropathy and serum albumin level < 30 g/l. The number of patients in chronic dialysis treatment in Slovakia rises. Therefore we have performed a retrospective study. It's aim was to evaluate the main reasons and risk factors of hospitalizations in chronic haemodialysis patients in Turciansky region. METHODS: 80 patients undergoing regular haemodialysis treatment in 2 dialysis centres during 24 months were included. Following data were collected: age, gender, comorbidity, type of nephropathy, residual diuresis, some data connected with dialysis treatment, laboratory parametres and body mass index. RESULTS: During the given period of time 66 per cent of the patients of our sample required hospitalization. The main reasons of their hospitalization were complications of vascular access (13%), surgery (12%), the sepsis (9%) and serious bleeding (9%). Hospitalized patients showed significantly lower BMI and residual diuresis compared with non-hospitalized ones. They also suffered from greater amount of other diseases. As for gender prevailed men and patients with a history of cardiovascular disease, thrombosis and peptic ulcer. There was no connection between morbidity and age, type of vascular access and laboratory parameters observed.