Objectives:

It is not known whether there are differences in achieving dialysis treatment goals between patients in the Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (PTC) hemodialysis program and those in the Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday (SPCt) hemodialysis program. In this study, the achievement of hemodialysis treatment goals and mortality of patients on these two different hemodialysis programs were evaluated.

Materials and Methods:

Sixty-two chronic hemodialysis patients, who were older than 18 years and under thrice weekly hemodialysis treatment for at least one year, were evaluated in our center. The demographic and clinical characteristics and hemodialysis-related laboratory data were retrospectively analyzed and compared between the MWF and TTS groups.

Results:

Twenty-nine of the patients were female (46.8%), the mean age was 51.8±15.4 years, and median dialysis vintage was 55.5 months. Thirty-two patients (51.6%) were on MWF program and 30 patients (48.4%) were on TTS program. There was no difference in demographic characteristics, dialysis vintage and arteriovenous fistula rate between the groups. While the rates of reaching the hemodialysis target values were similar between the groups, only serum potassium level was higher in the MWF group (p=0.002). Patient mortality was higher in the TTS group compared to the MWF group (16.7% vs 3.1%, respectively, p=0.099). The presence of atherosclerotic disease was an independent risk factor for mortality (odds ratio=10,827, 95% confidence interval: 1.127-104,046, p=0.039).

Conclusion:

In this study, it was shown that while the success of achieving hemodialysis treatment goals was similar between the groups, patient deaths tended to be less in the group of patients who received all treatment on weekdays. The presence of atherosclerotic disease was a risk factor for mortality.

Keywords: Weekend Effect, Hemodialysis, Daily Variation, Quality Indices