Peritoneal dialysis is effective in the treatment of heart failure.

-heart failure is the third leading cause of death of cardiovascular origin and the first hospital admission in patients over 65 years of

-peritoneal dialysis improves the quality of life, survival, reduces hospital admissions and costs of treatment in patients with refractory heart failure

Madrid, February 2012.- cardiac insufficiency La (IC) in Spain reaches a prevalence of 6% in the population over 40 years, amounting to 16% in people over the age of 75. Addition, it is the leading cause of hospital admission en mayores de 65 años and, in general, causes more than 80,000 annual hospitalizations. The IC is the third cause of cardiovascular death in Spain. All these factors make the IC an important disease and a public health problem.

Heart failure is a chronic disease usually treated with drugs, but there are patients who do not respond to treatment. Peritoneal dialysis has been very effective for them. In fact, on the application of this technique in failure chronic renal will be discussed on Friday at the VIII national meeting of Peritoneal Dialysis in Oviedo.

Obvious advantages of peritoneal dialysis

(1) Recent studies have shown that peritoneal dialysis improves the quality of life, survival, decreases hospital admissions and reduces the costs of treatment in patients with heart failure.

Using DP costs are reduced, since that analysis of coste-utilidad reflects that DP mode has a cost of 23.305 euros a year, adjusted for quality of life, while traditional conservative treatment involves a cost of 81.503 euros a year, according to the studies carried out by the team of Nephrology of the Hospital Universitario Central de Asturias.

According to DRA. Carmen Rodríguez, studies show that using DP in this type of patient, front that they used only conventional treatments, patients show a significant improvement in their symptoms, reduces the rate of hospital admissions (from 62 to 11 days of income per year at risk) and mortality is reduced (82% a year survival and 56 per cent for the two year)(os, versus conservative treatment which reflects a median survival of 25% annually). Thus, peritoneal dialysis is a perfect complement to treatment as usual, helping the Elimination of liquids in patients who do not respond to the diuretic therapy.

Home peritoneal dialysis

Peritoneal dialysis removes excess fluid of patients with refractory heart failure. It is a very simple method that the patient performs at home. The only patient attends hospital for review every one or two months. This helps the patient continue with his usual life and gives you greater freedom and privacy in their treatments.

j. D. MontejoM. a. bass, G. Weight, r. Selgas role of peritoneal dialysis in the treatment of refractory heart failure ” Nephrology 2010; 30: 21-7