Dialysis Therapy

Abstract

The population with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) in the United States is composed of more than 200,000 patients who undergo dialysis and 70,000 patients with functioning kidney transplants.¹ With the prevalence of ESRD growing at a rate between 7 and 9 percent per year, it is projected that there will be more than 350,000 such patients by the year 2010.² Although the overall incidence of ESRD is 242 cases per million population per year, blacks have a disproportionately high incidence (758 per million population per year), as compared with whites (180 per million population per year).¹ Diabetes is the leading . . .