ABSTRACT
Chronic renal failure and end-stage renal disease are increasingly significant public health problems both medically and economically. Approximately 3 million persons in the United States have chronic renal failure, as defined by a glomerular filtration rate of less than 60 mL/min/1.73 m. Many of these patients progress to end-stage renal disease, the prevalence of which in the United States was almost 1400 per million, or a total of 406,081 patients in 2001, with an average age of 57.8 years. The prevalence of endstage renal disease has increased every year since 1980, although the rate of increase has slowed to 2.4% per year (1).
