Category Archives: Insurance
Sodium Thiosulfate Therapy for Calcific Uremic Arteriolopathy
Hemodialysis.com Interview with Dr. Sagar U. Nigwekar
Massachusetts General Hospital, Bulfinch 127, Boston, MA 02114
Hemodialysis.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Nigwekar : Calcific uremic arteriolopathy is a rare but life-threatening condition in hemodialysis patients. Ours is the largest-to-date study that systematically examined outcomes in patients with calcific uremic arteriolopathy treated with intravenous sodium thiosulfate. Effectiveness and safety in this cohort study were assessed by conducting surveys of treating physicians and by reviewing electronic records.
We observed that majority of patients (>70%) demonstrated improvement in skin lesions. Mortality rate in patients treated with sodium thiosulfate was noted to be lower than historical published data in patients not treated with sodium thiosulfate. Sodium thiosulfate had mild adverse effect profile in this setting. Study limitations include its observational nature, low survey response rate, and inability to assess long term safety profile of sodium thiosulfate.
Marie Benz, MD on Google+Predicting the prevalence of chronic kidney disease in the English population
Hemodialysis.com Author Interview: Ben Kearns, MSc.
Research Associate, School of Health and Related Research, The University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
Hemodialysis.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Ben Kearns: We used a large, representative sample of adults in England, and were able to identify undiagnosed cases of CKD. We found a sample prevalence for CKD of 6.76%; much greater than the reported national prevalence of 4.3%. The prevalence of diagnosed CKD in our sample was 3.9%; indicating that about two in every five patients with CKD are unknown to their doctor.
We developed statistical models to predict the overall prevalence of CKD. We identified increasing age, female gender and the presence of cardiovascular disease as all being risk factors that increased the odds of having CKD. In addition, we noticed that cardiovascular disease was a stronger risk factor amongst younger patients than it was amongst older patients.
Association Between Lack of Health Insurance and Risk of Death and ESRD: Results from the Kidney Early Evaluation Program (KEEP)
Hemodialysis.com Author Interview:
Claudine Jurkovitz, MD, MPH
Christiana Care Center for Outcomes Research (CCOR)
Christiana Care Health System
John H. Ammon Education Center, 2nd Floor Newark, DE
Hemodialysis.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Jurkovitz:
• KEEP participants without insurance are at higher risk of death and end-stage renal disease (ESRD) than participants with private insurance
• Compared with those with insurance, KEEP participants without insurance were less likely to have seen a physician in the past year.
• Of participants with hypertension, those without insurance were the least likely to achieve target levels of blood pressure
