Background: Longevity on dialysis is determined by many factors. One of these has increasingly been seen to be 'dialysis dose'. There are several methods for calculating dialysis dose. We wanted prospectively to test 'gold-standard' UKM-Kt/V with various shortcut bedside formulae, to see whether reliance on the latter approach was likely to lead to errors in over- or underprescribing dialysis regimens.
Methods: Ten bedside formulae for the calculation of Kt/V (urea) were compared with UKM Kt/V values, in a month-long study involving 507 dialysis sessions in 50 patients in a single-centre in-patient haemodialysis unit.
Results: For patients with UKM Kt/V<0.8 (median 0.69, n=140), simplified formulae had a difference (delta) of 0.094-0.396 from the calculated UKM resulting in an inter-method variability ranging from 13 to 57%. The least difference was seen with the Calzavara formula (P=NS), maximum difference with the Barth formulae (P<0.05). No statistically significant differences were seen when comparing Daugirdas 1 and 2 and Keshaviah formulae with UKM, for patients with UKM Kt/V<0.8. For patients with UKM Kt/V in the range 0.8-1.4 (median 1.06, n=285) the extreme recorded values from simplified formulae were 0.012 (least different) and 0.245 (most different) from the UKM mean, with an inter-method variability ranging between 1.1% (Basile method) to 23.1% (Calzavara). No statistically significant difference were seen when comparing Daugirdas 1 and 2, Keshaviah, and Lowrie formulae with UKM, for patients with UKM Kt/V 0.8-1.4. For patients with the highest UKM Kt/V values (>1.4; median 1.58, n=72), all simplified formulae gave Kt/V values lower than UKM Kt/V: the minimum difference was 0.070 using Jindal (P=NS, intermethod variability of 4.4%), while the maximum was seen when using Calzavara (P<0.05; difference = 0.69; intermethod variability of 43.7%). There was also no statistically significant difference for Basile and Kerr methods. For the group as a whole the biggest difference from UKM mean values was obtained using Barth's and Calzavara's formulae (delta of 0.171 and 0.140 respectively (P<0.05)).
Conclusions: The best correlations were seen with the Daugirdas 2 formula (r2=0.953). Also, comparing grouped formulae containing ln(Co/Ct) terms with those incorporating the (Co-Ct)/Co ratio (i.e. the urea reduction) there was a better correlation for all formulae employing the logarithmic transformation (r2=0.951-0.953 cf. r2=0.939-0.940). Nevertheless no bedside formula had the accuracy of UKM-Kt/V.