Belgian peer review experience on the Achille's heel in haemodialysis care: vascular access

AIMS: In order to improve the supervision and to evaluate the quality of care in dialysis units, a national project was promoted as a Peer Review. It consisted of systematic, continuous and critical evaluation of the care and the application of international guidelines and compared the reality of care with standards. METHOD: The first chart consisted of the evaluation of infectious episodes of vascular access. This point is particularly relevant since infection represents the second cause of mortality in haemodialysis. A questionnaire concerning each patient was designed. Questions concerned the description of vascular access and the related infectious events. Each questionnaire included 21 items. The project involved 29 dialysis centres, 1,644 patients and 1,775 vascular accesses. The database included 90,525 data. RESULTS: Among the 29 centres, the native arteriovenous fistula (AVF) is the first choice (67.5%) in vascular access, but the proportion of AVF decreases with age contrary to the catheter, which is more frequently chosen, in older patients. Independent of age, 20% of hospitalisations are among patients with catheters and only 7% among patients with AVF. The RR (relative risk) of being hospitalised (any complication of vascular access) is 1.68 for patients with catheters compared to patients with AVF. The rate of infections does not increase with age but is higher for patients with catheters (RR = 2.26). The number of infections appears to be dependent on the staphylococcus aureus carriage in the year. CONCLUSIONS: This first step allows each centre to compare itself to others in an anonymous way. This approach should lead to specific recommendations to improve the quality of care in dialysis units.