RATIONALE & OBJECTIVE: Mortality is an important outcome for all dialysis stakeholders. We examined associations between dialysis modality and mortality in the modern era.

STUDY DESIGN

Observational study comparing dialysis inception cohorts 1998-2002, 2003-2007, 2008-2012, and 2013-2017.

SETTING & PARTICIPANTS: Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) dialysis population.

EXPOSURE

The primary exposure was dialysis modality: facility hemodialysis (HD), continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD), automated PD (APD), or home HD.

OUTCOME

The main outcome was death.

ANALYTICAL METHODS

Cause-specific proportional hazards models with shared frailty and subdistribution proportional hazards (Fine and Gray) models, adjusting for available confounding covariates.

RESULTS

In 52,097 patients, the overall death rate improved from ~15 deaths per 100 patient-years in 1998-2002 to ~11 in 2013-2017, with the largest cause-specific contribution from decreased infectious death. Relative to facility HD, mortality with CAPD and APD has improved over the years, with adjusted hazard ratios in 2013-2017 of 0.88 (95% CI, 0.78-0.99) and 0.91 (95% CI, 0.82-1.00), respectively. Increasingly, patients with lower clinical risk have been adopting APD, and to a lesser extent CAPD. Relative to facility HD, mortality with home HD was lower throughout the entire period of observation, despite increasing adoption by older patients and those with more comorbidities. All effects were generally insensitive to the modeling approach (initial vs time-varying modality, cause-specific versus subdistribution regression), different follow-up time intervals (5 year vs 7 year vs 10 year). There was no effect modification by diabetes, comorbidity, or sex.

LIMITATIONS

Potential for residual confounding, limited generalizability.

CONCLUSIONS

The survival of patients on PD in 2013-2017 appears greater than the survival for patients on facility HD in ANZ. Additional research is needed to assess whether changing clinical risk profiles over time, varied dialysis prescription, and morbidity from dialysis access contribute to these findings.