Various obstacles to peritoneal dialysis development in Japan: too much money? Too much fear?

At 31 December 2005, the number of patients on maintenance dialysis in Japan was 257,765, with 9599 patients having started dialysis that year. Kidney transplant cases in Japan number about 1000 annually. Thus, almost all endstage renal disease patients in Japan are likely to live on dialysis for the remainder of their lives. For various reasons, peritoneal dialysis has a lower penetration rate among Japanese dialysis patients, and work to educate patients and nephrologists about PD needs to be done.