19^th Annual Conference on
Nephrology

Dr. Chien Chih-Chiang, Associate Professor and attending physician, department of nephrology, Chi-Mei Medical Center, Taiwan. He grew up in Taichung, Taiwan and received his Bachelor`s degree of medicine from the Chung Shan Medical University in 2001. After graduation, he received resident physician and fellow physician training in division of nephrology, department of internal medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taiwan. Since 2006, he works as an attending physician in department of nephrology, Chi-Mei Medical Center, Taiwan. In the meantime, he began his life long investigation of epidemiology and mortality of patients with end-stage renal disease and dialysis.

The worldwide elderly dialysis population has grown significantly and is expected to have more comorbid conditions and shorter life expectancies than the general elderly population. Predicting outcomes for this population is important for decision-making. Our study is to examine the comorbidity index for outcome predictability in elderly dialysis patients. In this population-based cohort study, we enrolled elderly patients who started maintenance dialysis in Taiwan. Further analyses of all-cause mortality and life expectancy in these groups with different comorbidity index score were performed. As results, a total of 21,043 incident dialysis patients divided into 4 groups by the comorbidity index score (intervals ≤ 3, 4-6, 7-9, ≥ 10) were analyzed. During a 10-year follow-up, 11272 (53.55%) patients died. Kaplan-Meier curves showed significant survival differences between groups (log-rank: P < 0.001). After stratification by age, life expectancy was significantly longer in groups with lower the comorbidity index scores. In conclusion, the comorbidity index is a strong predictor of mortality in elderly dialysis patients.