News Briefs: Dialysis in the morning increases length of life
News Briefs: Dialysis in the morning increases length of life
Elderly patients with renal failure who undergo dialysis treatment in the morning live more than a year longer than patients who receive treatment in the afternoon, according to a group of researchers at Emory University in Atlanta.1
The researchers followed 242 patients, ages 60 and older, for 11 years or until the patients died.
The patients underwent treatment at 59 dialysis centers in different areas of Georgia. Of those patients, 167 were seen during the morning and 75 were seen in the afternoon.
"Patients who received dialysis during the morning survived, on average, for 941 days after entering the study compared to 470 days for patients receiving dialysis during the afternoon," says Kathy Parker, PhD, RN, associate professor of nursing at Emory University School of Medicine and co-author of the paper.
"To our knowledge, this is the first time an association between renal failure and time-of- day treatment has been studied," says Donald Bliwise, PhD, associate professor of neurology and co-author of the study.
Reference
1. Bliwise DL, Kutner NG, Zhang R, Parker KP. Survival by time of day of hemodialysis in an elderly cohort. JAMA 2001; 286:2,690-2,694.
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