Aim: We aimed to evaluate the impacts of heomodialysis (HD) in older patients, and potential consequences of adverse events for health insurance costs.
Methods: Two hundred and fifty-five new patients (130 were younger than 65 years and 125 were older than 65 years) who had received conventional HD for at least 1 year were reviewed.
Results: Older patients had significantly more arteriovenous (AV) shunt failures (0.7 ± 0.1 vs 0.4 ± 0.07, P = 0.006) and hospitalisations (0.8 ± 0.1 vs 0.4 ± 0.09, P = 0.03) than younger ones. Stepwise multivariate linear regression analysis showed that AV shunt failure was an independent risk factor for hospitalisation.
Conclusions: The relatively high risk of AV shunt failures and hospitalisation in older patients highlights the additional expenditure on HD required in terms of health insurance.
Keywords: arteriovenous access failure; haemodialysis; health insurance; hospitalisation; older people.
© 2012 The Authors. Australasian Journal on Ageing © 2012 ACOTA.