Race, Gender, and Incident Dialysis Patients’ Reported Health Status and Quality of Life

Patient-reported physical and mental health status, along with disease-specific concerns ("quality of life") reported by patients, provide information about experience on dialysis that can help to improve patient care. Among prevalent hemodialysis (HD) patients, blacks have been shown to report higher health status and quality of life scores than whites, but whether similar race differences characterize incident patients who start regular dialysis is not known. Health status and quality of life, measured by the Kidney Disease Quality of Life-Short Form, reported by black men, black women, white men, and white women who initiated HD and peritoneal dialysis (PD) in the Dialysis Morbidity and Mortality Study (DMMS) Wave 2 were examined. After adjustment for patients' sociodemographic and clinical characteristics, the only race differences observed were that among HD patients, black women scored highest on the burden of kidney disease measure (lower perceived burden), and among PD patients, black men had the lowest satisfaction with care scores. It is possible that differences between blacks' and whites' reported health status and quality of life become more evident as patients' dialysis vintage increases, a hypothesis that requires following a well-characterized incident cohort over time. These findings add to existing evidence that minority patients on dialysis report less satisfaction with their care than do white patients, an important area for continued study.