A comparison of urgent-start of hemodialysis vs urgent initiation of peritoneal dialysis: a meta-analysis study

To investigate the effects of urgent-start HD(USHD) and urgent-start PD(USPD) on dialysis patients and provide references for relevant clinical practice.

A literature search was conducted in Chinese and English databases (PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, CNKI, Wanfang, VIP) and the cutoff date for which was July 30, 2023. Studies comparing USHD and USPD were included and I² statistics and Q tests were used to determine heterogeneity among them. Risk ratios (RR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were computed for count data.

Nine studies met the inclusion criteria. The all-cause mortality rate was 0.173 (0.070, 0.277) for USPD versus 0.214 (0.142, 0.286) for USHD, indicating that USPD had a protective effect against all-cause mortality compared to USHD (RR = 0.76, 95% CI 0.63–0.91). Patients receiving USPD had lower risks of infection-related mortality (RR = 0.19; 95% CI 0.05–0.76), bacteremia (RR = 0.38; 95% CI 0.18–0.80), and composite complications (RR = 0.54; 95% CI 0.41–0.71). However, no significant differences were found between USHD and USPD for cardiovascular mortality (RR = 0.68; 95% CI 0.28–1.68) or cancer mortality (RR = 0.44; 95% CI 0.15–1.29).

Compared to USHD, USPD has better protective effects against all-cause mortality, infection-related mortality, bacteremia, and composite complications. However, more high-quality research is still needed to further investigate the impacts of the two dialysis modalities on patients.