Urgent-start peritoneal dialysis in chronic kidney disease patients: A systematic review and meta-analysis compared with planned peritoneal dialysis and with urgent-start hemodialysis

An increasing number of studies have focused on whether peritoneal dialysis (PD) can be used for the urgent initiation of dialysis in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). We performed this systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the feasibility and safety of urgent-start PD compared with those of planned PD and urgent-start hemodialysis (HD) in this population. PubMed, EMBASE, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), clinicaltrials.gov, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) were searched for relevant studies. Conference abstracts were also searched in relevant websites. The meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.3 software. A total of 15 trials involving 2426 participants were identified. The quality of the included studies was fair, but the quality of evidence was very low. Unadjusted meta-analysis showed that urgent-start PD had significantly higher mortality than planned PD, while adjusted meta-analysis did not show a significant difference. Higher incident of leakage and catheter mechanical dysfunction were observed in urgent-start PD. However, peritonitis, exit-site infection, or PD technique survival were comparable between urgent-start and planned PD. The all-cause mortality was comparable in urgent-start PD and urgent-start HD. Bacteremia was significantly lower in the urgent-start PD group than with urgent-start HD. Based on limited evidences, PD may be a viable alternative to HD for CKD patients requiring urgent-start dialysis. Because of the inconsistent results and the low quality of evidence, a definitive conclusion could not be drawn for whether urgent-start PD was comparable with planned PD. Therefore, high-quality and large-scale studies are needed in the future.