ABSTRACT
The UK Renal Registry is beginning to hold epidemiologic and clinical audit data, mirroring the efforts of the United States Renal Data Service (USRDS).
Although in absolute terms the numbers of patients with severe CRF going onto dialysis are modest (especially compared to cardiac or cancer patients), there is a disproportionate financial cost – a typical dialysis patient’s health care will ‘cost’ at least £20,000 (US $30,000) per annum to deliver. Presently 30-40% of all new dialysis patients have diabetes as the underlying causative factor for CRF. As populations have grown more obese, there has been a huge increase in type II diabetes and its attendant complications. Such patients, if they live to enter a dialysis programme, are typically 60-70 years of age, with cardiovascular morbidities, and are very rarely suitable for renal transplantation. Thus only about one in four current dialysis patients can hope to receive a renal transplant.
