Current status of dialysis therapy for ESRD patients in Korea

ABSTRACT

The Korean Society of Nephrology (KSN) launched the End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) Patient Registry in 1985, and the online internet registry program was begun in 2001. The increasing number of elderly people and diabetic patients in Korea has resulted in a very rapid increase in the number of ESRD patients. The total number of dialysis patients was 50,289 42,596 receiving hemodialysis (HD) and 7,694 receiving peritoneal dialysis (PD) at the end of 2011. The prevalence of dialysis therapy was 972.4 patients per million population (PMP), and the proportion of dialysis therapy was HD 84.7% and PD 15.3%. The primary causes of ESRD were diabetic nephropathy (47.1%), hypertensive nephrosclerosis (19.6%), and chronic glomerulonephritis (10.4%). The mean urea reduction ratio of hemodialysis was 68.11% in male HD patients and 74.09% in female HD patients. The mean Kt/V was 1.395 in male patients and 1.660 in female patients. The most common cause of death was cardiac arrest (26%), followed by sepsis (9.7%), cerebro-vascular accident (8.7%), respiratory infection (8.4%), and myocardial infarction (6.6%), respectively. The five-year survival rates of male and female dialysis patients were 65.3% and 68.0% in Korea.