All participants were adult patients receiving maintenance
hemodialysis at Dialysis West at the Texas Diabetes Institute, San Antonio, Texas. Subjects were followed up to 48 months. The Bexar County Hospital District approved the
prospective enrollment of 26 patients in the short daily
hemodialysis program. The only eligibility criterion was
willingness to participate in the short daily hemodialysis
program, and no patient was excluded. A total of 108
patients were screened for enrollment and short daily
hemodialysis was offered to all patients. Spaces were consecutively
offered to 36 patients who agreed to participate
on a voluntary basis until 26 enrollees was reached. At
that time, 51 contemporary conventional hemodialysis
patients from the original 108 eligible patients were
selected on the basis of similar baseline characteristics
(age, gender, etiology of renal disease, co-morbidity
burden, vascular access, medications and time on dialysis)
(Figure 1). Fifteen patients in the daily hemodialysis
group completed 4-year follow-up and remained on six
times weekly dialysis. Patients were censored at death,
transplant or transfer to a nonparticipating dialysis unit.
Following completion of 1 year of daily dialysis, daily
dialysis was offered to all subjects and eight subjects from
the conventional dialysis cohort began daily hemodialysis.
A sensitivity analysis was performed in which subjects
that crossed over were excluded from analysis and the
results were comparable with the original results