UK Renal Registry 18th Annual Report (December 2015) Chapter 5: Survival and Causes of Death in UK Adult Patients on Renal Replacement Therapy in 2014: National and Centre-specific Analyses.

Survival of incident patients on RRT continued to improve over the last 14 years for both short and long term survival up to 10 years post RRT start. One year after 90 day age adjusted survival for incident RRT patients in the 2013 cohort increased to 91.4% from the previous year (91.0%); survival increased in incident patients aged ,65 years and in older patients (565 years). There was a difference in one year after 90 day incident survival by age group and diabetic status: diabetic patients aged ,65 years have slightly worse survival than non-diabetic patients, but survival for older diabetic patients (565 years) was significantly better than for non-diabetic patients. One year age adjusted survival for prevalent dialysis patients was 88.6% in the 2013 cohort, a slight decrease from the 2012 cohort (89.3%). Age adjusted one year survival for prevalent dialysis patients with diabetic primary renal disease has been declining slightly since 2012. Centre and UK country variability was evident in incident and prevalent patient survival after adjusting to age 60 and this finding would benefit from further investigation. The relative one year risk of death on RRT decreased with age from about 19 times that of the general population at age 35–39 years to 2.6 times at age 85 and over. In the prevalent RRT population, cardiovascular disease was the most common cause of death, accounting for 23% of deaths. Infection accounted for 20% of deaths and treatment withdrawal for 16% of deaths.