Long-term clinical outcomes of peritoneal dialysis patients: 10-year experience of a single unit from Tunisia

Published data on the outcome of maintenance peritoneal dialysis (PD) since the initiation of PD in Tunisia is poor. The purpose of this study is to report long-term clinical outcomes of PD patients through a 10-year experience at a single unit. This is a retrospective review of the medical records of 182 PD patients who were followed up from January 2006 to June 2016. All patients were followed till death, renal transplant, switch over to hemodialysis (HD) or the end of the study in June 2016. The mean age of the incident patients was 43.93 ± 16.95 years. Nineteen (10.4%) were aged >65 years and 59.3% were male. The average duration of follow-up was 27.75 ± 26.18 months. The mean duration of PD treatment was 27.75 ± 26.18 months. There were 186 episodes of peritonitis that occurred over the total study period (54 episodes during the 1 st year). The overall incidence of peritonitis during the 10-year study period was 1 per 27.25 patient months. Mechanical complications were noted in 31.2% of cases. Thirty- two (17.6%) patients had catheter displacement. Only 26 cases of hemoperitoneum (14.3%) were recorded. Death occurred in 23.1% of cases. Twenty-two patients (27.5%) were transplanted; 56 patients (70%) were transferred to HD, one patient had renal recovery and one case had voluntarily interrupted PD. In Kaplan-Meier curves of residual renal function (RRF) loss, there was a significant difference between peritonitis group and peritonitis-free group (P = 0.01). Technique and patient survival were associated with diabetes with a significant difference. The main cause of technique failure was peritonitis (61.4%). Moreover, the main repertoried causes of death were cardiovascular and septic causes. The mortality of diabetic and elderly PD patients was higher than mortality in nondiabetic and nonelderly groups, respectively, in our study. Peritonitis was associated with loss of RRF and technique failure.