Sherman R A, Cody R P, Matera J J, Rogers M E, Solanchick J C
Department of Medicine, UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick 08903.
Am J Kidney Dis. 1994 Dec;24(6):921-3. doi: 10.1016/s0272-6386(12)81061-4.
The frequency of missed and shortened hemodialysis treatments was assessed in a randomly selected sample of 860 ESRD patients from 54 dialysis units. Data were collected for three sequential 4-week periods covering 28,108 treatments. During each of these 4-week periods, 5.1% to 7.6% of patients missed at least one treatment, 26.8% to 32.3% of patients had at least one shortened treatment, and 6.6% to 7.9% of patients missed 10% or more of their prescribed therapy. Over the entire 12-week period, 50% of patients had either missed or shortened treatments (or both). Missed and shortened treatments are prevalent enough to account for clinically important deficiencies in delivered dialysis for a significant number of patients.
