Comorbidity is not associated with dialysis modality choice in patients with end-stage kidney disease

Aim: Over the past years the proportion of home dialysis patients has decreased in the Netherlands. In addition, the home dialysis use varies significantly among centres. It is unclear whether this is the result of differences in comorbidity, or other factors. Our aim was to investigate the association between comorbidity and dialysis modality choice. Methods: The multi-centre DOMESTICO cohort study collected comorbidity data of patients who started dialysis in 35 Dutch centres from 2012 to 2016. Comorbidity was assessed by the Charlson comorbidity index. Home dialysis was defined as any peritoneal dialysis or home haemodialysis treatment during follow-up. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was used to assess the association between comorbidity and dialysis modality, with a mixed model approach to adjust for clustering of patients within dialysis centres. Results: A total of 1358 patients were included, of whom 628 were treated with home dialysis. In crude mixed model analyses, the probability of receiving home dialysis was lower when comorbidity score was higher: having a high comorbidity score resulted in an odds ratio of 0.74 (95% CI 0.54–1.00) when compared with patients without comorbidities. After adjustments for age, sex, ethnic background, body mass index and dialysis vintage, there was no association between comorbidity and home dialysis. Conclusion: Comorbidity was not significantly associated with home dialysis choice, after adjustment for several confounding factors including age and body mass index. Future studies should aim at unravelling the centre-specific characteristics that probably play a role in dialysis modality choice.