Efficacy and Safety of Incremental Hemodialysis

The majority of dialysis patients are currently treated with a fixed dose thrice-weekly haemodialysis (HD) (3HD/wk). The 3HD/wk regimen has been assumed, until recently, almost as a dogma in the dialysis community. Incremental HD is based on the simple idea of adjusting its dose according to the metrics of RKF. REAL LIFE is a pragmatic, prospective, multicentre, open label RCT, investigator-initiated, comparing the intervention arm (incremental HD) with the control arm (standard 3HD/wk). A Variable Target Model (VTM) has been suggested, which gives more clinical weight to the RKF and allows less frequent HD treatments in patients with lower RKF. The investigators recommend to start and keep on with once-weekly HD, which should be possible until residual renal urea clearance (KRU) falls below 2.5 - 3.0 mL/min/35 L, i.e., glomerular filtration rate (GFR) ≈ 4 mL/min/1.73 m2. The primary outcome is the survival of kidney function, with the event defined as urinary output (UO) ≤ 100 mL/day, confirmed by a further collection after 2 weeks to exclude temporary illness. Secondary outcomes are: composite primary cardiovascular endpoint (cardiovascular death, non fatal myocardial infarction and/or or non fatal stroke); intima-media thickness of the carotid arteries; specific cardiomyopathy control; RKF preservation; survival of the patients; hospital admissions; anemia control; mineral and bone disorder control; middle molecules and RKF. Considering a type I error of 0.05 and type II error of 0.20, the study must enroll 49 patients in the conventional HD arm and 49 patients in the incremental HD arm, totaling 98 patients enrolled into the trial. Finally, under the assumption of an expected drop-out rate of 15%, 58 patients per group should be enrolled for a total of 116. The assessment of the key kinetic parameters as well as the guide to the selection of operative parameters, as required to get the required equilibrated Kt/V (eKt/V = 1.2), will be done by using SPEEDY, a spreadsheet prescription tool that uses essentially the same equations used by Solute Solver, the software based on the double pool UKM recommended by the 2015 KDOQI guidelines. SPEEDY is freely available at the European Nephrology Portal (ENP). The link is https://enp-era-edta.org/174/page/home. The control arm includes patients put on a thrice-weekly HD schedule, as detailed above. The dialysis dose (eKt/V) should be about 1.2.