Advanced Kidney Disease

LAS VEGAS — The CMS End-Stage Renal Disease Treatment Choices model was designed to offer optimal care while cutting Medicare expenses, but policy may not always have the intended effect, according to a speaker.

Older adults with advanced kidney disease are often motivated to receive a transplant but may face emotional and psychosocial barriers during evaluation, according to a study.

A quality improvement intervention successfully boosted education among patients with kidney disease but did not achieve higher home dialysis choice rates, according to study results.

Patients with end-stage kidney disease may be at higher risk for hypoglycemia, with a disproportionate effect on young, Black and female patients, according to published data.

Nephrology providers have limited knowledge and experience in offering conservative kidney management to patients who decide to forgo renal replacement therapy, recently published survey results show.

Editor’s note: Healio | Nephrology News & Issues interviewed Michelle Estrella, MD, MHS, a professor of medicine and the renal section chief at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, about her role as conference chairperson and highlights of the agenda for the National Kidney Foundation Spring Clinical Meetings, which take place May 14-18 in Long Beach, California. For more information and to register for the meeting, visit www.kidney.org/spring-clinical.

Older patients with autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease experienced a slowed annual rate of GFR decline by 1.66 mL/min/1.73 m2 per year when taking tolvaptan treatment, according to data published in Kidney Medicine.

Using intensive blood pressure control in patients with stages 4 to 5 chronic kidney disease may delay the onset of kidney replacement therapy, according to data published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

Among patients with advanced chronic kidney disease, increasing dietary potassium consumption to recommended levels can increase blood potassium concentration on a short-term basis, according to results of this study.

When treated with direct-acting antiviral therapy, patients with chronic hepatitis C virus infection were at a lower risk for end-stage kidney disease and the composite of ESKD or death, according to a speaker at ASN Kidney week.