Home Dialysis News

Baxter International Inc. is voluntarily recalling four lots of intravenous solutions to the hospital and user level. These products have been found to contain particulate matter identified as cellulosic fibers and/or plastics. Baxter received four complaints over a period of six months from customers whose visual inspection identified the appearance of visible particulate matter prior to administration to a patient, Baxter said in a news release.

When NN&I reviewed the data from our first ranking of U.S. dialysis providers 20 years ago, the headline read, “The changing face of renal care providers: Who will dominate the market?” The article at the time talked about a “buying frenzy” by mid-sized organizations that signed up investors or went public to raise cash and buy clinics. “We continue to benefit from a motivated seller environment and the strongest acquisition pipeline we have seen in years,” noted Renal Treatment Center chairman and president Robert L. Mayer, Jr. RTC was ranked fourth largest at the time with 4,460 patients.

The home dialysis patient advocacy group Home Dialyzors United is calling on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to update its payment policy to include full reimbursement for home hemodialysis training as part of the final rule for 2015.

Dialysis provider DaVita Kidney Care has named Martin Schreiber, MD, as its new vice president of clinical affairs for home modalities.

After a long drought in growth and scant activity among its faithful, peritoneal dialysis is starting to come into its own as a viable treatment modality for dialysis. Because of the gradual rise in PD usage amidst the relative paucity of experience and knowledge, many articles are being published in professional trade journals and talks given at conferences covering a wide range of PD topics. However, these articles and talks do not address three core, underlying issues on which I believe a successful PD program must focus, with the ultimate motivation being the patient’s welfare, not a provider’s financial gain. If these three core essentials are not rigorously pursued, patient well-being will be mediocre, the PD professionals will get discouraged, and the entire PD program will stagnate, at best, and probably fail.

ANAHEIM—Individuals who end up in the hospital emergency room after months, maybe years, of ignoring the signs of kidney failure usually have a fairly standard course of treatment: dialysis delivered via a temporary hemodialysis catheter. Once stabilized, the newly diagnosed ESRD patient is transferred to an outpatient facility for maintenance dialysis.

Karl D. Nolph, MD, a pioneer in the field of dialysis and a longtime leader of the University of Missouri School of Medicine’s Division of Nephrology, died Monday at his home in Columbia, Mo. He was 77.

The nonprofit Medical Education Institute has released a 2.0 version of its free, web-based decision aid, My Life, My Dialysis Choice, to help people with chronic kidney disease choose which type of dialysis will be the best fit for their lifestyles and health values. The tool is available at http://mydialysischoice.org/

This blog post originally appeared at Home Dialysis Central's website. Find more posts from this blog, Kidney Views, at http://www.homedialysis.org/news-and-research/blog.

AMSTERDAM – Baxter International Inc. announced the presentation of clinical data supporting the safety and efficacy of the VIVIA haemodialysis (HD) system. Results from two studies conducted in a clinical setting showed acceptable clearance of uremic toxins and an overall safety profile similar to that associated with conventional hemodialysis devices. The VIVIA system, designed to deliver High Dose hemodialysis in the home, completed the CE marking process (market approval) in Europe in December 2013. The system is being introduced on a limited basis in select European dialysis clinics in 2014 to allow patients and health care providers experience with the system.